P R E - P O T T E R Y N E O L I T H I C

(BM2) developed to its full capacity as a house of the dead. The remains of some 600 individuals, most represented by partial skeletons, were found in the building. Now rectangular in plan, it was renewed three times and comprised rooms, a courtyard, standing stones, and “altar.” The quantity of skeletal material and the diversity of mortuary practices left no question with regard to purpose. Separate crypts contained numerous skulls and long bones carefully arranged, and the remains of decapitated primary burials. Primary and secondary burials of headless individuals were also found under the pavement, and in many of these cases, as those burials in crypts, they were accompanied by gifts—beads and pendants made from boar’s tusk, shell, and so on.75 In its last phase, the excavators found a cache of 49 burnt and crushed skulls on the floor, as if they had been stored on a shelf prior to the building’s destruction. The end of its existence was intentional as it was dramatic—it was burned and buried under a thick layer of pebbles that formed the floor of the subsequent Terrazzo Floor building mentioned earlier.

The practice of terminating a building continued into the earlier Cell subphase, when houses were emptied of personal ornaments (but not utilitarian objects), sealed at the doors, and buried. Open areas were ritually buried too. The founding of the Pebbled Plaza (of the Cobblepaved subphase) provides a good example. It featured two rows of undecorated stelae and two grooved slabs that were deliberately broken and buried under the Earth Plaza (of the Cell subphase) that superimposed it.

Central Anatolia

As in general settlement planning, cultic symbolism in central Anatolia differs from that in the southeast. The situation at As¸ıklı is curious. It has a probable complex of public monuments south of the paved road, but there is a conspicuous scarcity of figurative art (only one small, clay animal figurine).76 The sturdy architecture consists of a casemate construction adjacent to the road, and a large structure (Building HV) that is separated from nearby Building T by a narrow courtyard (HJ). The interior walls of Building T were painted red, as was the polished floor, which was laid thickly (up to 8 cm) from a mixture of ground tuff and water. A low bench ran along the north, west, and south walls, whereas the east wall was fitted with a large hearth and canal that connected with the exterior. Another hearth, domed and made of mud brick, was situated in the adjacent courtyard (HG), which was paved with blocks of basalt and later plastered with clay. In another room (AB), two double graves were found underneath the floor: One containing the remains of a young woman and an elderly man, the other a woman and an infant. This room was painted a purplish-red. Given the careful finish of Building T, its wellproportioned fitments, and position within the complex overlooking the Melendiz River, the excavators suggested that it functioned as a shrine; at the very least it was a building of some importance. As a public structure, it has been compared to Building A at contemporary Musular, located less than half a kilometre away, which is distinguished by fine, lime plastered floors that were painted red and burnished (Figure 3.11).77 Raised benches—one ran along three walls

64

P R E - P O T T E R Y N E O L I T H I C

came the control of wild herds through selective hunting patterns, which would not have resulted in the biological changes of animals. Then, in the second stage, animals were herded into settlements. This separation from the wild herds required new management practices that eventually brought about a morphological change, including a reduction in the size of the animal, and, in the case of domesticated sheep and goats, a change in the structure of their horns, from roughly four-sided cross-section to a triangular one.

Wild sheep and goats had a more defined geographical distribution than the wild ancestors of cattle and pigs, which are found beyond western Asia. Red sheep (Ovis orientalis), or moufflon, was very much at home in the rugged landscape of the Taurus-Zagros arc. Although it reached as far south as the Negev, it was not a popular food source there. The bones of sheep and goat are often indistinguishable, hence the group term “ovicaprine.” Judging by the quantity of sheep bones at sites such as Abu Hureyra and Çayönü, it appears that the first steps towards the sheep domestication were taken in northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia (Figure 3.12). Even so, the distribution of the bezoar (Capra aegagrus), the wild ancestor of domestic goats, can be

Figure 3.12 Map showing the area in which sheep were first domesticated set against the vast homeland of their wild ancestors. Percentages refer to the amount of sheep bones found in assemblages dated between 7000 and 6200 BC (after Smith 1995)

66

P R E - P O T T E R Y N E O L I T H I C

roughly defined and it is more expansive than the moufflon, extending into the southern Caucasus and the Elburz Mountains. More sites hunted the bezoar, or Persian wild goat, including Cafer Höyük, but it was probably first domesticated around Ganj Dareh, in the Zagros.

Emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum dicoccoides) and barley (Hordeum vulgare spontaneum) carpeted the full length of Fertile Crescent, whereas wild einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum boeoticum) is absent in the Levant, but covers much of Anatolia (Figure 3.13). Plants, unlike animals, can have their genetic composition changed far more rapidly, between 20 and 200 years, although radiocarbon dating lacks the precision to establish whether wild einkorn, emmer wheat, or barley was the first cereal to be domesticated. Genetic studies of einkorn wheat have suggested that the Karacadag˘ Mountains, in the Diyarbakır region of southeastern Turkey, may have been where it was first domesticated.80 By comparing the DNA makeup of a range of wild einkorn wheat with cultivated einkorn lines (Triticum m. monococcum), scientists have been able to identify a cluster of 11 lines whose wild and cultivated varieties match very closely. These phylogenetic analyses also compare well with the archaeological record. Not far from Karacadag˘ , on the upper and lower fringes of the Fertile Crescent, are a number of Early

Figure 3.13 Geographical distribution of the wild ancestors of einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, and barley (adapted from Smith 1995)

67

P R E - P O T T E R Y N E O L I T H I C

Neolithic sites—Cafer Höyük, Çayönü, and Nevalı Çori—that have yielded samples of both wild and cultivated einkorn.81 The change from wild to domestic cereals required the modification of only a few genes, which was caused unintentionally by foragers when they cut the plants. In the wild, cereals have a brittle stem (rachis) that enable the loosely attached seeds to selfdisperse and reseed the fields. Domestic cereals are distinguished from their wild progenitors by the presence of a sturdier spike, requiring people to discard the husk from around the seed. By harvesting the cereals before they dispersed, and then planting some of them in the subsequent year, early farmers would have promoted the tougher variety, which in natural circumstances would have clung to the stem and not necessarily scattered.

Despite the prevalence of sedentary lifestyles, hunting and gathering was still a basic component of daily life. Moreover, the shift towards husbandry and cultivation was gradual, but by no means uniform. Not surprisingly, the archaeological record reveals site-specific exploitation of the natural resources. At Hallan Çemi, for instance, the community managed to lead a fully sedentary lifestyle while procuring the bulk of their food through hunting and gathering. They collected high protein foods such as wild almonds and pistachio, and also exploited lentils and vetches, which were favored at Çayönü in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A.82 But unlike their Natufian neighbors further south, they did not gather cereals, which explains the negligible quantity of sickle blades among their stone tools. The significance of this subsistence model—a reliance on plant resources other than cereals—is that it runs counter to the generally perceived notion that cereal exploitation played a central role in the transition from mobile to sedentary economies.

The patterns of animal exploitation at Hallan Çemi are no less surprising. Whereas most animal bones—including sheep/goats, pigs, deer, bears, and various birds and fish—belong to wild individuals that were hunted, a small but significant percentage point to fledgling attempts at animal husbandry.83 But sheep and goats, commonly assumed to be the most amenable and earliest domesticates, were not the subjects. Rather, Hallan Çemi’s inhabitants preferred to experiment with pigs. Both the age and sex ratios point to pigs being maintained and butchered at the site. This happened much earlier than at Çayönü, where pigs may have been kept towards the end of the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (Channel Building subphase). Prior to that the community depended entirely on wild game.84

Just before the first pigs were raised at Çayönü, people began to collect wild emmer and einkorn, though pulses still formed the bulk of their nonmeat diet.85 In time, however, as cereals were cultivated, they became the main staples in the subsistence diet, certainly by the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (Cell houses). By then sheep and goats were fully domesticated and they too began to replace their wild counterparts in the kitchen.86 A similar sort of picture is attested at Nevalı Çori, though Göbekli has yielded no evidence to suggest that its inhabitants either cultivated cereals or practiced animal husbandry. Yet another picture has emerged at Cafer. There the community was fully agricultural (cereals and pulses) from the start, but did not keep animals in the settlement. Indeed, their hunting patterns are distinct and indicate a shift towards larger animals that provided more meat.87

68