New NSF Grant for Regents’ Prof, Alum

Developing Quantitative Geochemical Approaches in Archaeology using the Neolithic sites of Aşıklı Höyük and Balıkı, Turkey

This newly awarded three-year NSF project brings together geochemists Jordan Abell (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, USA) and PI Jay Quade (Arizona, USA) with zooarchaeologist/taphonomist Co-PI Mary Stiner (SoA Regents’ Professor; Arizona, USA), geoarchaeologist Susan Mentzer (Ph.D. UArizona, 2011; Tübingen, Germany), geneticist Christina Warriner (Harvard/MPI Jena, Germany), and archaeologists Mihriban Özbaşaran and Güneş Duru (Istanbul, Turkey) in a multi-disciplinary effort to understand in detail the geochemistry of early Neolithic deposits at Aşıklı Höyük and Balıklı (Central Anatolia, Turkey). Our approach uses a new analytical toolkit (Abell et al., 2019) to interpret changes in the chemical inputs from humans and other animals across spatial units and through time within early Neolithic sites. This proposal builds on a recent study by the applicants that quantified urinary salts in sediments at Aşıklı Höyük to track increases in site use intensity and a growing dependency on managed livestock by early Neolithic humans. (Anthro News Digest date: 07/09/2021)