Evidences for Social Structure and Ritual Practices from Körtik Tepe at the Beginning of Settled Life

Summary

Until the end of the 1990s, southeastern Turkey was considered a secondary center of Neolithisation. However, excavations in the context of the Ilisu Dam project have shown that there was a long local tradition of permanent settlement since at least the Epipaleolithic. Evidences from Körtik Tepe indicate strong commitments to the site and to households. Social and emotional relationships were consolidated by intense ritual behavior, including burials beneath house floors, the increasing use of body adornments, and rich symbolism. Some decorated objects and burial rites were highly standardized. Many of the dead were buried in a hocker position with their head pointing to the north/northeast. However, despite the enhanced materialization, and the differentiation and institutionalization of social identities, some behaviors resisted or denied these changes. Many valuable objects were deliberately destroyed to cover the dead bodies or to serve as "offerings" for the dead, though no true ancestor cult can be discerned. It seems that the people of Körtik Tepe were on the threshold of the institutionalization and objectification of social roles and ritual behavior, but basically were still hunter-gatherers and fishermen intimately embedded in their natural environment.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Religion, history and place in the origins of settled life in the Middle East.

Keywords

Spatial Coverage