What are the main conclusions that can be drawn form the contents of this book? First, Asia Minor cannot be reduced to a periphery of the Fertile Crescent or Mesopotamia, on the one hand, and the Aegean, on the other. Nor is Asia Minor a clearly bounded entity either geographically or culturally. Any division of the globe is arbitrary, and especially in the Aegean and the Marmara Region, the distinction between Asia Minor and adjacent areas is often arbitrary. Nonetheless, clear cultural differences between Asia Minor and regions to the east can be documented from the Early Neolithic to the EBA. In the west, the Sea of Marmara was a cultural watershed in the Neolithic and the subsequent Chalcolithic, but this was no longer the case in the Late Chalcolithic and the EBA. In the Aegean, cultural connections between mainland Asia Minor and the islands appear to have been especially strong in the Middle Chalcolithic and the EBA II and III periods.

Second, fault lines of cultural difference occur as much within Asia Minor as at its borders. Above all, this overview demonstrates the remarkable diversity of cultural horizons in prehistoric Asia Minor. While the Early Neolithic in southern Central Anatolia has some coherence, in that settlement types and chipped stone industries can often be compared amongst sites, from the Late Neolithic onwards we can document a large number of regional cultural horizons in the archaeological evidence. This fragmentation disappears only in the latter part of the EBA II, when pottery styles and building types across Asia Minor become largely interchangeable.