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Southeastern Anatolia

With its large exposures and numerous building levels Çayönü continues the story from Hallan Çemi, providing the most comprehensive picture of a Pre-Pottery Neolithic village in Anatolia (Figure 3.3). Around 9400 BC, the settlement changed markedly with the construction of buildings based on a grill plan (subphase 2).42 House floors were no longer semi-subterranean, but elevated on unusual pebble foundations, which reveal a tripartite plan (Figure 3.4): A northern half with parallel rows of supporting stones (“grills”), a rectangular central room furnished with fireplace and lime-plastered floor, and, at the southern end, stone-paved cells flanking an entrance. The need for elevation may have arisen because of tendency to flooding and dampness, for unlike today’s harsh dry conditions, the Ergani Plain then experienced wetter conditions with a landscape that harbored marshes, swamps, and rivers.

Despite the shift from round to rectilinear houses, conceptually an architectural revolution, builders at Çayönü continued to use wattle and daub for the superstructure, which was probably vaulted.43 Moreover, the popularity of grill structures, together with the uniformity they display in size and plan, and their arrangement around open spaces point to a community with a clear sense of settlement layout. Inside their houses, inhabitants organized their space more effectively than before. A scatter of bone and stone tools and debris over the parallel foundations, for instance, suggests they carried out craft activities at the back of the building, whereas tasks requiring heavy ground stone objects (pestles and grinding stones) were found in the central room. The cells near the entrance, too small for habitation, may have provided storage. Equally important is the observation that some of the centrally located buildings also have a concentration of exotic artefacts and raw materials, with minimal evidence of manufacture, suggesting a socioeconomic differentiation among households.44 In terms of mortuary practice, the deceased continued to be buried either as individuals or with their kinsmen beneath courtyards or the floors of buildings.

By the beginning of the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, around 8700 BC, grill buildings were being modified and improved as they were slowly transformed into channelled buildings (Figure 3.4).45 During this change, builders experimented with foundation types, eventually preferring parallel rows of stone that were gradually placed closer together (resembling drainage channels) to form a “platform.” Whatever the plan of the supporting stones, the floors of these houses were now lime plastered and sometimes painted red, and separated from the foundations by a layer of organic material, possibly branches. But the most dramatic change that occurred during the channelled building subphase was the switch from a post framework to the use of chafftempered mud (a forerunner to mud bricks) for the construction of walls. Accordingly, roofs changed in design from vaulted, wattle and daub arrangement to flat and earthen. At about this time, the dead were disposed of in a new manner. Secondary burials, including the collection of skulls, were now the norm, and foreshadow a custom that took on massive proportions in the following subphase, with the Skull Building (Figure 3.5: 1).46

Channel buildings are also found at Nevalı Çori, in Urfa, where five building levels display

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Figure 3.3 Aerial view of Çayönü showing the stone foundations of various building types (Photo: courtesy Mehmet Özdog˘ an)

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variations on the theme.47 Depending on the number of lateral and longitudinal supports, a house should have more than nine compartmentalized foundation units, and channels that connected to gutters which ran along the outside. Measuring 18.20 × 6.20 m, House 26 in Level II was the largest structure and probably accommodated an extended family. Like most channelled buildings, it comprised two parts—a long main room and a smaller annex at the front.

Towards the end of the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, the use of space and planning began to change. Houses and workshops at Çayönü, now oriented along a different axis, were localized in the western part of the settlement. The most important development, however, was the significance assigned to a communal open space. Not only was this space large at both Çayönü and Nevalı Çori, but two features defined the area clearly from the residential sector: Numerous roasting pits and public structures, which were isolated and conspicuous. At Çayönü we have the “Flagstone” and “Skull” buildings (Figure 3.5: 1, 2), whereas Nevalı Çori boasts an impressive cult building, which are dealt with later.48

Around 8000 BC the inhabitants of Çayönü again introduced new concepts in architecture and settlement plan, which point to an ever developing labour force. Named after the type of flooring, the cobble-paved building subphase is sometimes considered transitional (Figure 3.4). Its most impressive structure is buttressed and called the Terrazzo Floor building, distinguished by a base layer of limestone riverine cobbles and rocks set in a concrete-like reddish matrix (Figure 3.5: 3).49 Its surface has an eye-catching layer of finer pinkish pebbles that were smoothed and polished to a hard finish; two pairs of white-pebbled, parallel lines at both ends of the room add further definition. By this time the popularity of the open courtyard began to decline. Although still enclosed by houses, its purpose shifted to butchering and bone tool production.

The use of cobbled floors also occurs at Cafer Höyük, near Malatya, where in the early phase a large structure with a tripartite plan (Level X) replaced a two-roomed house (Level XII).50 But the Cafer residents did not lavishly copy the building practices at Çayönü, as is evident by their preference for large (90 × 25 × 8–9 cm) mud bricks similar in size to those used later in Syria and elsewhere, including Gritille further down the Euphrates River.51 According to Cauvin, the uniformity of these bricks over a wide area is suggestive of a standardized unit that originated in Syria.52

The mode of social interaction seems to have changed by the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, when these closed courtyards all but disappeared. We may speculate that activities were now carried out mostly in houses or on rooftops. Houses were large and had high stone foundations that resembled units of cells (hence “cell buildings”) that supported thick mud brick walls.53 Their proportions and internal plans were different too, and became more diverse as time progressed. Rooms were internally divided to provide discrete spaces for specific functions, indicated by the different types of artefact found within them. Basements were also utilized, for storage and burials, and access between the various cells was provided by openings in the foundations. But open spaces seem to have persisted at Cafer Höyük (Levels VIII–V), where buttressed, mud brick cell houses with hearths and storage bins most likely had an upper story.54

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