TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparing pollen and archaeobotanical data for Chalcolithic cereal agriculture at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
AU - Eastwood, Warren J.
AU - Fairbairn, Abdrew
AU - Stroud, Elizabeth
AU - Roberts, Neil
AU - Lamb, Henry
AU - Yiğitbaşıoğlu, Hakan
AU - Şenkul, Çetin
AU - Moss, Andrew
AU - Turner, Rebecca
AU - Boyer, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the Çatalhöyük Research Project and its director, Ian Hodder, for permission to work at Çatalhöyük and the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey for logistical support during fieldwork. The 1995, 1999 KOPAL field seasons received financial support from the National Geographic Society, the Leverhulme Trust (F/261/0) and Aberystwyth University. We are also grateful to the Turkish Ministry of Culture for research permission and to our representative from the Konya Museum, Necip Çay. The 1995, 1999 fieldwork seasons involved the following personal: John Tibby, Romola Parish, Jamie Merrick, David Twigg and Liz Hunt. The European Pollen Database and Henk Woldring are thanked for providing pollen data. All authors have contributed intellectually to the manuscript and have approved the final version. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments.
Funding Information:
We thank the Çatalhöyük Research Project and its director, Ian Hodder, for permission to work at Çatalhöyük and the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey for logistical support during fieldwork. The 1995, 1999 KOPAL field seasons received financial support from the National Geographic Society , the Leverhulme Trust ( F/261/0 ) and Aberystwyth University . We are also grateful to the Turkish Ministry of Culture for research permission and to our representative from the Konya Museum, Necip Çay. The 1995, 1999 fieldwork seasons involved the following personal: John Tibby, Romola Parish, Jamie Merrick, David Twigg and Liz Hunt. The European Pollen Database and Henk Woldring are thanked for providing pollen data. All authors have contributed intellectually to the manuscript and have approved the final version. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018
PY - 2018/12/15
Y1 - 2018/12/15
N2 - Establishing agricultural activity using pollen analysis is one of the prime challenges of a palaeoecological investigation. Here we report combined pollen and archaeobotanical data originating from a waterlogged off-site organic-rich fill radiocarbon dated to ∼8 ka Cal BP located between the two occupation mounds at Neolithic-Chalcolithic Çatalhöyük, south central Turkey in order to investigate the record of Early Chalcolithic agricultural activity. Pollen results indicate extremely high abundances of Cerealia-type pollen (30->70%) and critical measurements of these show them to be Triticum-type, Avena/Triticum-type, Secale-type and Hordeum-type. Pollen data are also compared with archaeobotanical data retrieved from the same sediment matrix and show high abundances of Triticum and Hordeum grains, awns, spikelet forks and glume bases. Archaeobotanical and pollen data are therefore unequivocal in showing the presence of cereals throughout the period of deposition, and although preservation of archaeobotanical cereal plant remains is typically poor, the presence of glume wheats, including emmer/‘New Type’ wheat and domesticated barley, is consistent with cereal data from on-site excavation deposits at Çatalhöyük. Pollen data also include high occurrences of clusters of Cerealia-type, Chenopodiaceae, Poaceae and Asteraceae and point to local deposition that is best explained as the anthers being deposited at the coring site attached to cereal or other herbaceous waste material. Archaeobotanical data in addition to very high percentage values of individual Cerealia-type pollen grains and clusters of Cerealia-type pollen and other non-arboreal pollen types suggest that the margins of the Çatalhöyük site were probably used for early stage crop processing activities as well as a waste site. Although radiocarbon dating of this organic-rich fill suggests that it was deposited over a very short time period (∼300 years) during the Early Chalcolithic, the data highlight the importance of adopting complementary palynological and archaeobotanical approaches in order to better understand the taphonomy of micro and macrofossil deposits associated with archaeological sites. While more distant, regional pollen sites in south-central Anatolia have difficulty registering Neolithic-Chalcolithic cereal cultivation, this study shows that if a pollen core site is located too close to an archaeological site, then pollen assemblages can be overwhelmed and ‘swamped’ by the products of local cereal processing and the inclusion of domestic waste material thus rendering it difficult to elucidate meaningful data on local agricultural activity
AB - Establishing agricultural activity using pollen analysis is one of the prime challenges of a palaeoecological investigation. Here we report combined pollen and archaeobotanical data originating from a waterlogged off-site organic-rich fill radiocarbon dated to ∼8 ka Cal BP located between the two occupation mounds at Neolithic-Chalcolithic Çatalhöyük, south central Turkey in order to investigate the record of Early Chalcolithic agricultural activity. Pollen results indicate extremely high abundances of Cerealia-type pollen (30->70%) and critical measurements of these show them to be Triticum-type, Avena/Triticum-type, Secale-type and Hordeum-type. Pollen data are also compared with archaeobotanical data retrieved from the same sediment matrix and show high abundances of Triticum and Hordeum grains, awns, spikelet forks and glume bases. Archaeobotanical and pollen data are therefore unequivocal in showing the presence of cereals throughout the period of deposition, and although preservation of archaeobotanical cereal plant remains is typically poor, the presence of glume wheats, including emmer/‘New Type’ wheat and domesticated barley, is consistent with cereal data from on-site excavation deposits at Çatalhöyük. Pollen data also include high occurrences of clusters of Cerealia-type, Chenopodiaceae, Poaceae and Asteraceae and point to local deposition that is best explained as the anthers being deposited at the coring site attached to cereal or other herbaceous waste material. Archaeobotanical data in addition to very high percentage values of individual Cerealia-type pollen grains and clusters of Cerealia-type pollen and other non-arboreal pollen types suggest that the margins of the Çatalhöyük site were probably used for early stage crop processing activities as well as a waste site. Although radiocarbon dating of this organic-rich fill suggests that it was deposited over a very short time period (∼300 years) during the Early Chalcolithic, the data highlight the importance of adopting complementary palynological and archaeobotanical approaches in order to better understand the taphonomy of micro and macrofossil deposits associated with archaeological sites. While more distant, regional pollen sites in south-central Anatolia have difficulty registering Neolithic-Chalcolithic cereal cultivation, this study shows that if a pollen core site is located too close to an archaeological site, then pollen assemblages can be overwhelmed and ‘swamped’ by the products of local cereal processing and the inclusion of domestic waste material thus rendering it difficult to elucidate meaningful data on local agricultural activity
KW - Agriculture
KW - Archaeobotany
KW - Cereal pollen
KW - Chalcolithic
KW - Neolithic
KW - Turkey
KW - Çatalhöyük
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85057028297&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.11.012
DO - 10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.11.012
M3 - Article
SN - 0277-3791
VL - 202
SP - 4
EP - 18
JO - Quaternary Science Reviews
JF - Quaternary Science Reviews
ER -