Around 6000 cal BC on the Konya plain in central Anatolia the nature of ceramic assemblages changed considerably, with higher quantities of pottery in use, a greater range of vessel shapes and new forms of surface treatment, principally comprising painted geometric motifs. Based on quantitative analysis of a pottery assemblage from the West Mound of Çatalhöyük, this chapter explores the details of these changes and their implications for understanding Anatolian societies at the turn of the 6th millennium. The argument turns on the need to interpret ceramic decoration in the context of broader networks of material practice.

The beginning of the Neolithic way of life in northwestern Anatolia is dated to around the mid-7th millennium cal BC. However, the process of Neolithization in this region differs from that of western Anatolia. The data from the new excavations have yielded information not only on the processes of Neolithization but have also revealed contrasts between two entities. In northwestern Anatolia, including the area surrounding the Bosphorus, which was already inhabited during the Mesolithic period, the Neolithic elements integrated with the Mesolithic infrastructure. On the contrary, the sites in the southeast of the region in particular, where there is no Mesolithic sub-stratum, bear more elements in common with central Anatolia. After this period, in the beginning of the 6th millennium cal BC, a slow change occurred in the region. Evidence of strict rules in settlement layout and the differentiation of cultural assemblages suggest that the region was being shaped by a new dynamic. This period lasted until the mid-6th millennium cal BC, when drastic changes began to take place in northwestern Anatolia, which can also be traced to the Balkans and the whole Anatolian Plateau. During this time, settlements in the northwestern Anatolia become smaller in size and permanent structures make way for small huts and later, in a hundred years, most of the settlements in the region were deserted.

As the Çatalhöyük West Mound has been the subject of much new research during and after the completion of the Çatalhöyük Research Project, this chapter will provide a summary of the research conducted by the West Mound Project. This interdisciplinary project brought together many specialist scholars to address the variety of data created during the excavation of the West Mound. In this chapter we will review the research into the material culture of the West Mound, with attention to the importance of new architectural forms and painted pottery in the changing social and economic life of the period. In addition, plant and animal remains and the stone tool industries see some general trends that may signal changes the environment and the way domestic activities respond. We will conclude the chapter with a look at current discussions on topics that have been highlighted by this new research.

The budgetary earmark was a key feature of public finance in the expanded Attalid kingdom and contributed to the success of the Pergamene imperial project. The dynamics and meaning of this administrative technique are thus explored in depth. Earmarking not only increased the quantity of money available to royal bureaucrats; it also made money into a medium for messaging. In a pointedly transparent manner, specific royal taxes and other revenues were earmarked for specific public goods. A series of inscriptions record the neat and final arrangements, but it is possible and even illuminating to reconstruct the entanglements of the process of negotiation by which these earmarks came into existence. The creation of an earmark required an interlocking of royal and civic fiscal institutions that further entrenched Attalid rule. The earmarking process posed ideological risks, as kings delved into the domain of private property and devolved agency to local actors, while also providing an arena for the display of providential care (pronoia) for royal subjects.

The long, uninterrupted sequence of Neolithic Yumuktepe displays both continuity and changes concerning architecture, burial customs, artifact production, storage techniques and subsistence pattern throughout the entire Neolithic, and also around 6000 cal BC. This chapter describes the continuities, gradual and abrupt changes that can be observed, and approaches the questions whether continuity should be emphasized over change, how noncontemporary changes can be correlated, and changes of which parts of the material culture could be more significant than continuity in other parts.

More than any other Hellenistic dynasty, the Attalids patronized city gymnasia. A much needed explanation for that curious philanthropic habit is provided, and it is argued that the Pergamenes helped transform the gymnasium into the “second agora” of the post-Classical polis. While the financial instability of the gymnasium and its agglomerative architectural ensemble made it an attractive target for royal donors, the ideological appeal was paramount. In the mid-second century BCE, the gymnasium may have represented itself as “the city writ small,” but this was a fiction, concocted by its elite membership and reinforced by the Attalids, ever anxious to present themselves as champions of the polis without ceding real power to the populace. The social distance of the gymnasium from other polis institutions was the critical factor for the entry of the Attalids, who partnered with towering civic benefactors to remake the space just as the royal capital reformed itself with a gymnasium as the anchor of the new urban plan.

This chapter locates the book within the last two decades of conferences on the Anatolian Neolithic and early farming in general, and its important role for Southwestern Asian and European Prehistory. It further outlines several key themes addressed by all individual chapters. These are the general chronological framework based on radiocarbon dating vs. the divergent culture historical phasing; the process of Neolithization as the spread of the Neolithic out of its core area of domestication of animals and plants in the Fertile Crescent; cooking and food habits as new ways of not only making, but also serving, displaying, consuming and storing food and drink; the role of climate and subsequent environmental change between ca. 6600 and 6000 cal BC. Finally, the chapter summarizes the individual contributions along the structure of the book.

The turn from the 7th to the 6th millennium BC in central Anatolia is marked by changes in settlement patterns and by the introduction of new pottery styles. In the Aegean new pottery assemblages also appear, accompanied not only by new technologies but also by new shapes and a wide spectrum of ornaments, ranging from complex painted patterns to the fusion of styles resulting in red paint being combined with impresso decoration. In the three main land zones framing the Aegean Sea to the west, north and east, several provinces with different repertoires can be defined according to surface treatments and firing techniques. The first appearance of pottery styles in a specific region distinguishes a center of innovation, which influenced and inspired neighboring areas, and possibly even more distant regions. But not only pottery styles highlight such regional innovation centers: joining together information on common and exceptional products and items made from e.g. obsidian or bone, the picture of both geographically and diachronically interrelated groups of people can be delineated. The spread of the Neolithic way of life can thus be conceived as a spread of innovations into the different parts of the Aegean. Mobility, networks and cooperation based on face-to-face contact were rather the motor for the complex and irreversible changes that reached their peak around 6000 cal BC in the Aegean than colonization or large-scale migration.