From Homes to Ruins: Ethnoarchaeology and Small-Scale Village Dynamics at Post-19th Century Kızılkaya, Central Turkey

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Drawing on interviews with former residents of the abandoned Turkish village of Kızılkaya, as well as photogrammetry and other visual research, in this poster we consider how this post-1800 rural village was organized around the household, the mosque, access to the river, and raising and caring for animals. The rural village of Kızılkaya, located in the Cappadocia region of Central Anatolia, was abandoned in 1963 due to the risk of major rockfalls from the high cliffs above the village. At one point the village consisted of 123 households and was home to around 983 people, who built stone buildings on top of intricately carved underground cave systems. Some of the buildings have been completely destroyed to construct new houses as part of the relocated village 500 meters away. In other cases, however, multi-storey house complexes are still well preserved and roofed. Drawing upon microhistorical research and ethnographic data, in the presentation we explore how the household and village community were organized, consider the material footprint of the household including use of intermural and extramural spaces, and the extent to which past use of space is visible in the archaeological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26129