Canan Cakirlar

Roman Gordion, on the Anatolian plateau, is the only excavated rural military settlement in a
pacified territory in the Roman East, providing a unique opportunity to investigate the
agricultural economy of a permanent Roman garrison. We present combined results of
archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological analyses, assessing several hypotheses regarding
Roman military provisioning. The garrison adapted its dietary preferences to local agricultural
systems, but maintained its traditional meat supply of pork, beef, and chickens as well. There
is evidence for economic interdependence with local farmers and cattle herders, selfsufficiency
in pork and chicken production, and complex relationships with autonomous
sheep and goat herders who pursued their own economic goals. If the Roman military in
Gordion exercised a command economy, they were able to implement that control only on
specific components of the agricultural sector, especially cereal farming. The sheep and goat
herding system remained unaltered, targeting secondary products for a market economy
and/or broader provincial taxation authorities. The garrison introduced new elements to the
animal economy of the Gordion region, including a new pig husbandry system. Comparison
with contemporary non-military settlements suggests both similarities and differences with
urban meat economies of Roman Anatolia.

I wrote this paper in 2010-11. It is based on a 2009 conference paper.

Foodways are fundamental to cultural identities, making their analysis an essential component of anthropological investigations
of past and present societies. In this paper I discuss the approaches to foodways research in Aegean archaeology,
with particular reference to the contribution of archaeozoological studies to the anthropological debate around Early Bronze
Age cultures in Northwestern Anatolia. First I provide a brief overview of past archaeozoological research in EBA Troia and
its neighbors, and then I set to discuss the present archaeozoological data from and around Troia, with special emphasis on
the role of deer consumption in ritual. I conclude that neither the methods nor the approaches currently employed in mainstream
archaeobiology in the eastern Aegean are completely satisfactory to achieve an anthropological understanding of
foofways in EBA Troia and its neighbors. Finally I discuss possible directions for future research in this field.

Western Anatolia, including the eastern Aegean region and the lowlands around the Marmara Sea,  is
crucial to understand the pivotal transformations of  early farmers in the eastern Mediterranean.
Most pre-Bronze Age  research in  western  Turkey has focused on  understanding  the region's role
in  the dispersal of  domesticated plants and animals, largely overlooking the persistence of  wild
plant and animal exploitation among farmers. As a  consequence, despite growing aspirations to
explain the re- gion's role in the Neolithisation of SE Europe and increasing interest in its 
further cultural development in  prehistory,  important proxy data with significant potential to
elucidate life  styles, cultural affinities, and innovation in  Neolithic and  Chalcolithic Western 
Turkey remain  unexplored.  Shells of  aquatic mollusks are one of the most tangible and
archaeologically visible categories of materials that represent (primarily) farming communities'
relationship with and approach to non-domestic organic resources in the 'wild'. They  are
ubiquitous and abundant  in Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in  western Turkey. In- formation from
twenty-eight archaeomalacological assemblages from Neolithic and Chalcolithic western
Turkey is used to address current debates in  the prehistory of the region.

University of Groningen, Netherlands c.cakirlar@rug.nl Research into the emergence of animal husbandry west of the Taurus mountains has been primarily confined to central Anatolia, the Lake District and the Marmara region in Anatolia, leaving a c. 85,000km area in western Anatolia largely unexplored. This vast region is crucial to understand the developmental trajectories of early farming practices in Anatolia and to explain the expansion of Neolithic agro-pastoralist lifeways into southeast Europe. The hand-collected faunal assemblage from Ulucak Höyük near Izmir provides a first opportunity to examine the beginnings and the evolution of Neolithic animal husbandry practices in this region across an uninterrupted cultural sequence dating between c. 7040–5660 cal. BC. Taxonomic, osteometric and demographic analyses suggest that all four initial food animals (sheep, goat, cattle and pig) appeared simultaneously at the beginning of the seventh millennium BC. The relative proportions of the domestic food animals indicate that beef was as significant a resource as sheep and goat meat. Fusion data for cattle and combined tootheruption and wear data for sheep and goat suggest that milk exploitation may have begun towards the end of the seventh millennium BC and intensified during the first quarter of the sixth. Evidence for post-adult caprines and cattle is thought to represent a strategy employed to maximise herd size and buffer risk. No clear evidence for cattle traction was found. Fallow deer seems to have become an increasingly important resource throughout the period. Small amounts of fish remains and substantial amounts of marine molluscs demonstrate that coastal environments were also exploited. These results indicate that central-west Anatolia played an essential role in the expansion of animal husbandry technologies into southeast Europe.Anadolu'da, Toros dağlarının batısında, hayvancılığın ortaya çıkışı ile ilgili araştırmaların daha çok orta Anadolu, Göller Yöresi ve Marmara bölgesi ile sınırlı kalmış olması nedeniyle Batı Anadolu'da yaklaşık 85.000 km'lik bir alan büyük ölçüde keşfedilmemiş durumdadır. Bu geniş bölge, Anadolu'da erken tarım uygulamalarının gelişim evrelerini anlamak ve Neolitik dönem agro-pastoral yaşam yollarının güneydoğu Avrupa'ya yayılma biçimini açıklamak için çok önemli bir bölgedir. İzmir yakınlarındaki Ulucak Höyük'ten elle toplanan fauna örnekleri, bu bölgede yaklaşık olarak M.Ö. 7040– 5660 arasına tarihlenen kesintisiz bir kültür dizisini ortaya koymuştur. Bu dizi Neolitik dönemde hayvancılığın başlangıcı ve gelişiminin incelenmesi için bize fırsat sunmaktadır. Taksonomi, osteometri ve demografi analizleri başlıca dört besi hayvanının (koyun, keçi, sığır ve domuz) M.Ö. yedinci binyıl başlarında birdenbire ortaya çıktığını göstermektedir. Yerel besi hayvanlarının karşılaştırmalı oranları, sığır etinin en az koyun ve keçi eti kadar önemli bir kaynak olduğunu göstermektedir. Büyükbaş hayvan verileri ile koyun ve keçi diş çıkarma ve aşınma verilerinin biraraya getirilmesi, süt kullanımının M.Ö. yedinci binyıl sonlarına doğru başlamış ve altıncı binyılın ilk çeyreğinde yoğunlaşmış olabileceğini göstermektedir. Yaşlı küçükbaş ve büyükbaş hayvanlara ait kanıtların sürü büyüklüğünü artırmak ve riski azaltmak için kullanılan bir stratejiyi temsil ettiği düşünülmektedir. Sığırın tarla sürmede kullanıldığına dair net bir kanıt bulunamamıştır. Alageyik, dönem boyunca giderek daha önemli bir kaynak haline gelmiştir. Az miktarda balık ve önemli miktarda deniz yumuşakçası kalıntıları, deniz kıyılarının da kullanılmış olduğunu göstermektedir. Bu sonuçlar, Batı Anadolu'nun orta kısımlarının, hayvancılık teknolojilerinin güneydoğu Avrupa'ya yayılmasında önemli bir rol oynadığını göstermektedir.

This paper discusses the archaeozoological evidence from Neolithic Ulucak Höyük (İzmir, ca. 7000–5700 cal. BC) in light of current debates on early dairy technologies. The paper aims to add new dimension to the current understanding of the role western Anatolia played in the evolution of early animal husbandry systems towards wider applications of dairy technologies. The evidence from Ulucak can potentially shed important new information on how these technologies were exchanged across the European-Anatolian frontier. To explore the appearance and evolution of milk use at Ulucak, the paper evaluates two main lines of archaeozoological data: mortality profiles — the most tangible archaeozoological evidence to detect the ways in which domestic animals were exploited (Payne 1973; Vigne and Helmer 2007), and diachronic changes in the contribution of cattle to subsistence economy, with reference to Evershed et al. (2008)'s proposal about a cattle-dairy link in northwestern Turkey. Results from Neolithic Ulucak are assessed in the context of relevant evidence from neighbouring sites in western Anatolia.

Archaeological evidence for fish preparation in the Eastern Mediterranean is scarce. A Late fifth century deposit at Kinet Höyük provides tangible evidence for the systematic butchering of large individuals of Epinephelus (groupers), and possibly of Mugilidae (mullets), and Clarias gariepinus (African catfish). Butchery marks on head and proximal trunk regions of groupers follow a consistent pattern, indicating the processing of large fish heads for, apparently, local redistribution and consumption at the settlement. Although elements of the vertebral column remaining between the atlas and the ultimate vertebra are virtually absent in the assemblage associated with these butchered fish remains, this differential representation of elements does not appear to be an unequivocal reflection of fish processing techniques and subsequent trade. The insufficiency of research on ancient fisheries and fishing in the Eastern Mediterranean poses an obstacle to contextualise this deposit within a general historical and archaeological framework.

The much debated link between the collapse of urban centres in northern Syria and climate change at the end of third millennium bc is arguably one of the best known cases about human societies' struggle with the unpredictable nature of the Holocene. Fine-grained analyses of bioarchaeological materials offer excellent opportunities to overcome some of the difficulties encountered in such studies that tackle the effects of changing environmental and climatic conditions on human civilisations during the Holocene. This paper explains the results of a pilot study that uses archaeological freshwater clams (Unio elongatulus) from northern Syria as intermediary anthropobiogenic proxies to infer about the seasonal rhythms of local pluvial regimes and their possible fluctuations at the turn of the third millennium bc. Having secreted their CaCO3 in chemical and periodical accordance with the ambient environment and ending up at tell sites through human activity, these bivalves are suitable vessels of information about human ecology in northern Syria at the end of third millennium bc. Marked differences were observed between the isotopic (δ18O and δ13C) compositions of shells from Tell Mozan, an urban site that continued to exist throughout the rapid climate event, and those from Tell Leilan, which went into hiatus at the end of third millennium bc. These results have important implications about the potentially severe effects of micro-environmental differences on distinct human communities inhabiting the same culturally unified region.

This study presents the results of craniometric analysis of 500 Byzantine Era dog skulls from the ancient site of the Theodosius Harbour in Istanbul (modern Yenikapı neighbourhood). To determine the typology of the skulls, up to 36 craniometric measurements were taken on each specimen. Fourteen indices and ratios were calculated from the measurements. Results show that the majority (97%) of the Byzantine dogs from the Yenikapı excavations were of mesocephalic type. Only 15 of the analysed skulls (3%) were of the dolichocephalic type. Only one dog skeleton has been recovered in situ during the excavations; analysis indicates that this individual belonged to a mesocephalic type dog. Brachycephalic dog skulls were absent in the samples studied from Byzantine Yenikapı. The results give important insight in continuities and discontinuities in dog-breeding traditions from the Roman to the Byzantine Eras, and between the West and the East during Medieval times.

....Son yıllarda yapılan arkeolojik ve paleoklimatolojik araştırmalar iklim değişikliklerinin geçmiş uygarlıkların şekillenmesinde de belirleyici bir rol oynadığını, insanların da küresel boyutta olmasa bile bölgesel boyutta çevre şartlarını etkilemiş olduklarını ortaya koyuyor. Bu araştırmalar uygarlık tarihindeki kesintiler olarak da görebileceğimiz karanlık çağlara sebep olan faktörlerin de daha iyi anlaşılmasını sağlıyor....

The past decade has witnessed a remarkable momentum in the advancement of archaeomalacological research but there is still a lot of room for progress. These ten papers are the second published proceedings of the archaeomalacology sessions organised by ICAZ (Mexico City, 2006). The contributions revisit important archaeological issues such as provenance of raw materials, dye production and the secondary uses of industrial shell waste, the role of shell artefacts in the symbolic world of diverse civilisations, technology and early cross-regional exchange networks. The papers testify to the merits of using state-of-the-art laboratory techniques to address archaeomalacological questions and demonstrate the interpretative value of integrating malacological expertise with experimental archaeology and detailed knowledge of archaeological context.

This study investigates the archaeomalacological assemblages from three primary sites in the Aegean: Troia, Yenibademli, and Ulucak. The principle aim of the study is to reveal the environmental factors, and cultural and economic stimuli that may have affected the temporal and spatial patterns in the role and nature of shellfishing as an economic activity and the role of shellfish as an element of human nutrition. Archaeological mollusk shells are additionally treated as palaeoenvironmental archives; enhancing and complementing the studies of past coastal environments in the Aegean. The strong relationship between the coastal environment and human subsistence strategies is demonstrated within a greater framework by reviewing the available data from other archaeomalacological studies from the Aegean.

Although the chronological focus of the study is the Bronze Age, results from Post-Bronze Age Troia and from Chalcolithic Ulucak are included in the dissertation, in order to add perspective to temporal and spatial patterns.

Methods included the chronological analyses of the proportion of mollusk remains within the faunal assemblages, analyses of calculations of relative abundance of mollusk taxa, taphonomic analyses, contextual analysis, statistical analyses of the morphometric properties of important mollusk species, periodic sampling and examination of modern mollusk populations, stable isotopic analysis, seasonality analysis of incremental shell growth, and employment of ethnographic analogies.

Prey species were identified, the environments exploited for mollusk foraging were reconstructed, and gathering and processing techniques were explained. The factors affecting the decisions concerning harvest times were discussed. The evidence for the “murex” dye production in Troia was evaluated.

The changes in the size of Cerastoderma glaucum shells in Troia and Patella caerulea in Yenibademli indicate chronological changes in mollusk exploitation modes and demonstrate the consequences of human exploitation pressure on mollusk populations. Changes in the demographic structure of C. glaucum populations in Troia support this view. Seasonal incremental analysis of C. glaucum populations in Troia revealed that harvesting of this species took place year-around, with increased activity during warmer months. Changes in the growth pattern of C. glaucum may be indicative of changes in local climatic conditions. A major morphological difference is observed between the archaeological and modern populations of C. glaucum in the Troad. This situation is attributed to environmental changes.

This study should be considered as a pilot study for the archaeomalacology of the Eastern Mediterranean. The palaeoeconomic and palaeoenvironmental implications that emerged from this study can only be tested and improved if further morphometric, stable isotopic and incremental growth analyses on the archaeomalacological material from the region are carried out in conjunction with regional research on extant mollusk populations.

Fishing and shellfish gathering were among the major activities for prehistoric Aegean communities. The mode, scale and range of these activities, however, must have changed through ages as the technology of seafaring and navigational knowledge improved. In this contribution, we would like to explore the diverse mechanisms of interaction facilitated by these activities, by distinguishing two major types of maritime engagements: Coastal, low-risk and non-coastal, high-risk. Low-risk engagements like land-based and inshore fishing as well as shellfish collecting were constant and intense, albeit with little planning, involving diverse social groups. Coastal, low-risk activities must have spurred intra-regional interactions which are reflected in the archaeological record as highly similar material cultures in a given region. High-risk maritime involvements, such as offshore and open-sea fishing, may have entailed careful planning, high navigational know-how and deepened knowledge of the seascapes. This sort of engagement, ethnographically associated with agents seeking adventure or prestige, must have occurred sporadically involving few people with perhaps certain age, gender and social status and had implications for inter-regional interactions across the Aegean. This paper will seek to make an assessment of these interaction spheres engendered by fishing and shellfish gathering practices.

Research into the emergence of herding systems west of the Taurus mountains has been largely restricted to micro-regions around well-known sites, leaving a ca. 85,000 square kilometre area in west Anatolia entirely unexplored. This vast region is crucial to understand the differential trajectories of early farming practices in Anatolia, and to explain the expansion of agro-pastoralist lifeways into southeast Europe. The BELSPO-INSTAP zooarchaeological research project “Subsistence Economy in Neolithic West Anatolia” explores the beginnings and the evolution of Neolithic animal husbandry practices in this region. In this paper I will discuss the recent results from Ulucak Höyük (ca. 7000-5700 cal. BC, Izmir) in the context of current perceptions of the form early herding took during westward Neolithisation.

"Although archaeozoology in Turkey is fairly developed, archaeozoology for Turkey is in immediate need for a
game plan. The earliest archaeozoological studies in Turkey date back to the late 19th century, probably with
Virchow’s study on the faunal remains from Schliemann’s excavations at Troy (1879). Today, archaeozoological
data from Turkey is in high demand on the global high profile research front. Supply seems to be adequate and
continuous; incalculable amounts of animal remains are brought to light in more than 300 excavation projects
each year. In accord with current paradigms, it seems to be business as usual, and, according to some, better
than usual. What is, then, at stake? 
This paper will evaluate the present state of archaeozoology in Turkey as a crucial natural and cultural heritage
issue as well as an important problem in higher education, identify priorities, and propose actions towards
solutions."