From Hunter-Gatherer to Nascent Farmer: Traditions of Obsidian Consumption At Epi-Palaeolithic - PPNA Körtik Tepe (SE Turkey)

Summary

Located on the Upper Tigris, Körtik Tepe represents one of the earliest sedentary settlements in the Anatolian part of the Fertile Crescent (11th - 10th millennium BC), its occupation spanning the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Epi-Palaeolithic, i.e. a transitional sequence from hunter-gatherer to farming economies. While the site has a strong local character, there is also clear evidence for interaction with communities at the larger regional level in SE Anatolia.

Using EDXRF to analyse >200 obsidian artefacts, we aim to produce a detailed characterisation of the Körtik Tepe material, integrating source and techno-typological specifics, to clarify these inter-community relations over time. Our results demonstrate the exploitation of at least three SE Anatolian sources, the materials being consumed in multiple traditions, with blades, bladelets and various microlithic tools.

Our results support the claimed close relations with Körtik Tepe’s neighbours (Çayönü, Hallan Çemi, Demirköy), part of an Upper Tigris regional tradition. We next need to compare how these people were consuming these obsidians, to see if a focus on raw material alone masks community-specific practices (as with recent archaeobotanical / faunal reportage) that enable us to reconstruct the mosaic of cultural traditions within the complex processes subsumed by the term ‘Neolithisation’.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

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