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80 - The Archaeology of Early Farming in Southeast Turkey

from Part VI: - Humans in the Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Yehouda Enzel
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Recent work in Southeastern Turkey identified formative stage of neolithization markedly different from the Southern Levant. Prior to excavations in the upper Tigris and Euphrates basins, early Neolithic communities were considered simple, egalitarian villages, still living in the insipient stage food-production, striving to survive. Excavations at sites such as Çayönü, Nevali Çori, Körtiktepe and Göbeklitepe, demand re-conceptualizing early Neolithic communities. The new picture now emerging is of a stratified society, high level of craft specialization, complex exchange network of raw materials, commodities and technologies, fully sedentary though still being dependent on hunting and gathering. Astounding are the distinctions between domestic and public buildings, the latter featured by sumptuous monumentality, housing sculptured relics enabling to look into the cult practices and to belief system of these communities. While almost all living beings are depicted, a clear discrepancy between the male and female is apparent in the symbolic world of these communities. The chapter presents a conspectus contextualizing Göbeklitepe within the framework of neolithization.

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