Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in Southeastern Turkey−1972

Abstract

The mound known as Cayonfi Tepesi (380 16' N; 390 43' E) in southeastern Turkey is one of the increasing number of early village sites which, since World War II, have been excavated archeologically in greater southwestern Asia. The evidence recovered in the autumn 1972 campaign of the Joint Istanbul-Chicago Prehistoric Project is briefly described, with.particular attention to Cay5nfi's architectural remains, which are most remarkable, considering the site's date of about 7000 B.C. There was evidence of domesticated food plants from the beginning but animal domesticates were not present (save the dog) until later in the major prehistoric phase of occupation.The Joint Istanbul University-Chicago Oriental Institute Prehistoric Project continued its excavations in southeastern Turkey in the autumn of 1972. Throughout this fourth digging season, we concentrated on the mound called Cay6nfl, the site of an early village-farming community of about 7000 'B.C. (1). Indeed our project's major research focus has long been the recovery and interpretation of evidence of the cultural and paleoenvironmental conditions within which effective food production was achieved in southwestern Asia (2). Without this achievement, mankind's earliest experiment with life in literate urban societies (which subsequently followed on the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia) could not have taken place.By the end of our 1972 field season, with deepened older trenches and in newer operations ( Fig. 1), slightly over 5% of the total three-hectare mound area of Cay6nii had been exposed (at least in the upper levels). This is a gratifyingly impressive exposure in proportion to overall site size, as prehistoric excavations go. Nevertheless, the increased yield of evidence which came with this larger exposure makes us now realize that some of our earlier generalizations and interpretations were overly simplistic. these were not all exposed in sequential stratigraphic order in one single trench, but in different trenches and at different depths, the exact correlations are yet to be worked out by interlinking the trenches. It is-for example-possible that the basal pits may have been due to outdoor activity adjacent to the curved-wall or grill-plan buildings and also possible that one or another of the broad-pavement buildings may have been continued in use during the cell-plan sub-phase. Hence we are increasingly reluctant to number the sub-phases consecutively.There do appear to have been levels of rebuilding or renovation within at least the basal-pit, grill-plan, cell-plan, and large-room-plan sub-phases. These levels clearly lie in proper stratigraphic order. A better understanding of the exact stratigraphic nature of the prehistoric occupation remains one of our goals for subsequent work. Clearly, however, the stratification of Cay6nd was not one of layer-cake regularity.Save for the occurrence of simple artifacts of hammered native copper, the impressive element of the Cay6nii inventory is its architecture or-strictly speaking-the st...