Assessing the Correlation between Bone Artifacts and Body Part Profiles: A Case Study from the Central Anatolian Site of Kaman-Kalehöyük

Summary

This paper investigates the production of bone artifacts during the Bronze Age (ca. 3000-1200 BCE) at the central Anatolian site of Kaman-Kalehöyük. At this time, small agrarian societies transformed into more complex polities and states, which gave way to a more centralized and specialized market economy. These transformations in sociopolitical and economic organization resulted in other changes as well. For example, animal exploitation patterns began to reflect a more regulated economy to meet food production, distribution, and consumption demands. Urbanized food management systems also had to meet the demands of craftspeople and specialists, if any, who might have preferred certain skeletal elements over others. In a rural site like Kaman-Kalehöyük, craftspeople, in particular, would use bone as raw materials readily and constantly available for production purposes. More specifically, we seek to elucidate whether preferences for specific bone elements reflect changes in the demands for consumer goods such as game pieces, jewelry, furniture inlays, archer’s thumb rings, bone shaft looms, and needles. More broadly, we aim to test whether there are correlations between changes in sociopolitical and economic organization and production of bone tools through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21973