Eastern Anatolian obsidians at Çatalhöyük and the reconfiguration of regional interaction in the Early Ceramic Neolithic

Abstract

A small group of exotic obsidian blades supplied from over 600km distant reached a particular area of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük in the Early Ceramic Neolithic (7000-6300 cal BC). The authors explore a variety of explanations and contexts, including changes in technology, agricultural expansion, gift exchange, bride-wealth and incomers from the east.

Fossil hunting in the Neolithic: Shells from the Taurus Mountains at Çatalhöyük, Turkey

“…The shells would have been a component in a large variety of materials brought to the site from a distance, i.e., not from the immediate vicinity of the site. Those include obsidian (Carter et al, 2008), various minerals used for producing stone beads, or beads from exotic materials brought into the site as finished products (Bains & Wright 2008), and pigments used for painting the walls but also found as lumps within burials (Çamurcuog lu Cleere, 2007). Palm phytoliths that could be the remains of a basket must have originated from farther south (Rosen, 2005).…”

The use of SEM-EDS, PIXE and EDXRF for obsidian provenance studies in the Near East: a case study from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (central Anatolia)

“…Given that we now know that obsidians from southeastern Anatolia reached Çatalhöyük during the Early Ceramic Neolithic (Carter et al, 2008), we also felt it necessary to select obsidians from the major sources of the Bingöl area and Nemrut Da g, together with samples from the nearby sources of Mus, Meydan Da g and Süphan Da g (Fig. 1).…”

“…q This article is dedicated to the late Joseph Salomon, a former leading member of Recent work at CRP2A (Bordeaux) has involved the investigation of two non-destructive analytical techniques that have received little, or no previous application in Near Eastern obsidian sourcing studies, namely scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) (Keller and Seifried, 1990;Delerue, 2007;Delerue and Poupeau, 2007) and particle induced x-ray emission (PIXE) (Abbès et al, 2003;Le Bourdonnec et al, 2005;Delerue, 2007;Carter et al, 2008). This paper focuses initially on the ability of these two methods to chemically discriminate some of the major Anatolian obsidian sources and to report new sourcing data using these approaches on 100 obsidian artifacts from Aceramic e Early Pottery Neolithic Çatalhöyük.…”

On sourcing obsidian assemblages from the Mediterranean area: analytical strategies for their exhaustive geochemical characterisation

“…This type of approach has been adopted by our research group since 2003, and is reflected in the various studies published since (see e.g. Bressy et al, 2008;Carter et al, 2008;Lugliè et al, 2008a;Orange et al, 2013;Le Bourdonnec et al, 2014). As explained above, this facilitates the exhaustive characterisation of lithic assemblages, while optimizing both the time and cost of the analyses.…”