Halaf Seasonality and Mobility: An Archaeobotanical View from Fistikli Höyük, Turkey

Summary

Settlement patterns and mobility during the Halaf period (ca. 6000-5400 B.C.) are known primarily from Late Halaf sites. On the basis of the Late Halaf pattern, Halaf economies have been characterized as having segmentary organization with some degree of pastoral specialization reflecting a broad pattern of long-term mobility. However, the paucity of floral and faunal studies, particularly for the Early Halaf, limits the visibility of economic variability over the course of the Halaf. In this regard, archaeobotanical data from the Early and Middle Halaf site Fistikli Höyük (ca. 6000-5700 cal B.C.), located in southeastern Turkey on the eastern edge of the Euphrates floodplain, facilitates more nuanced reconstructions of Halaf mobility patterns that highlight their temporal and spatial variation. At Fistikli, the relative lack of weed seeds in midden and surface samples, together with the high frequency of cereal chaff and high proportion of dendritic long-cell phytoliths in many surface samples point toward the regularity of cereal threshing on-site and the use of threshing by-products as fodder for sheep and goats. The use of both dung and wood fuel in separate burning installations may indicate repeated short-term occupation at different times of the year.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• 2017 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Naomi F. Miller

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14783