Wednesday, February  1, 2012, 4:00 pm
Haury Building - Room 216

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH AT AŞIKLI HÖYÜK, TURKEY

Mary C. Stiner, UA School of Anthropology
Jay Quade, UA Department of Geosciences

1. “Chasing the Roots of the Forager-Herder Transition”

Aşıklı Höyük is the earliest documented Neolithic mound site in Central Anatolia and provides surprising data on the first farming and herding cultures in the Middle East. The basal cultural layers of the mound exceed 8200 BCE and one of the driving questions of this large collaborative archaeological project concerns the early evolution of domesticated plants and animals. Our approach integrates zooarchaeological, geoarchaeological (including micromorphological), botanical and radiocarbon dating methods to learn about the ecological and social substrates from which village economies arose out of a hunter-gatherer heritage. The process of domestication requires some kind of reproductive isolation in the subject species. Hypotheses for the mechanics isolation range from intensive exploitation and protection of free-ranging animals to holding individuals captive and controlling mate choice. We examine whether stock were kept on site, along with information about sheep and goat age and sex structures relative to those of other hoofed animals. Cross-referenced results show us that some animals were indeed held captive inside the community, even during the earliest occupations. Such behaviors may associate with burgeoning concepts of ownership. Small animal use (fish, birds, small mammals) were important meat supplements prior to this time but were replaced with intensive use of sheep and goats. These changes suggest that considerable economic reorganization took place within less than 500 years of occupation and support the idea of an in-situ process of sheep and goat domestication at this Central Anatolian site.

2. “Building a Neolithic Tell from Carbonates”

Carbonate is abundant in many Neolithic mounds and can provide a nuanced story of human activities, environment, and chronology. We use isotopic and petrographic evidence to examine the origins of carbonate at Aşıklı Höyük. These carbonates are diverse in origin and some contribute to the overall bulk of the mound deposits. Bedrock and sediment around the site is largely carbonate free, and so the abundant carbonate in the fill must have been introduced by the Neolithic inhabitants. Carbonate boulders were used for wall construction in communal and special function buildings. The boulders, which were also used for plaster production, were obtained from outcrops of fresh-water limestone found <2 km from the site; other potential sources such as marine limestones and spring travertines exist nearby but were not used. Other, diffuse carbonates are ubiquitous in refuse, plasters, and many mudbricks. The most abundant source of diffuse carbonate is discarded wood ash. Wood combustion produces a very distinctive isotopic pattern in the resultant carbonate, a pattern also documented from Amud Cave in Israel. Wood ash refuse accumulated rapidly, raising the height of the mound, and many architectural modifications were made to keep pace with mound growth. Aragonitic endocarps from hackberry seeds, as well as fecal spherulitic calcite in herbivore (ruminant) dung, are also abundant at the site, even in the oldest layers. Hackberry was an important wild food source, and isotopic evidence suggests that the most but not all hackberries were harvested from local mesas. In addition to continuing an intensive program of carbon-14 dating of carbonized wood and seeds, we compare the fidelity of two carbonate phases for dating. The endocarps consistently yield younger ages than coexisting charcoal by ~130 years. We suggest that the younger ages for the endocarps are due to very slight post-burial exchange with ground-water or the atmosphere.