Past communities in the marginal landscapes of the Western Taurus Mountains, SW Turkey. The first results of the Dereköy Archaeological Survey Project

Summary

This paper presents the results of a new survey project in the Burdur Region (SW Turkey). Previous archaeological research in SW Turkey has until now mainly focused on the larger fertile lowland areas, which revealed numerous farming settlements from the Neolithic onwards and illustrated clear distinctive periods of continuity and collapse in human occupation in these areas. The more marginal areas in the landscape such as remote, high altitude locations, on the other hand, have not been the main area of interest. The new Dereköy Archaeological Survey Project, conducted within the framework of the Sagalassos Project, aims to fill this gap in knowledge by shedding light on how different landscape units were incorporated into the cultural landscape. By investigating the Dereköy highlands we would like to examine how and when past communities used more marginal landscapes, and to provide a window on periods which are currently poorly known in plain areas, such as large parts of the Chalcolithic (5500-3500 BC), the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BC), and the so-called Byzantine Dark Age (8th-10th centuries AD). The unique archaeological datasets of both low and highlands allow us to paint a more comprehensive picture of the Prehistoric cultural landscape in Anatolia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16198