Çayönü

Çayönü
Çayönü
Shown within Turkey
Location Diyarbakır Province, Turkey
Coordinates 38°12′59″N 39°43′35″E / 38.21639°N 39.72639°E / 38.21639; 39.72639Coordinates: 38°12′59″N 39°43′35″E / 38.21639°N 39.72639°E / 38.21639; 39.72639
Type Settlement
History
Periods Neolithic

Çayönü Tepesi is a Neolithic settlement in southeastern Turkey inhabited around 7200 to 6600 BC. It is located forty kilometres north-west of Diyarbakır, at the foot of the Taurus mountains. It lies near the Boğazçay, a tributary of the upper Tigris River and the Bestakot, an intermittent stream.

Archaeology

So-called skull building
Grill architecture

The site was excavated for 16 seasons between 1964 and 1991, initially by Robert John Braidwood and Halet Çambel and later by Mehmet Özdoğan and Aslı Erim Özdoğan.[1][2] The settlement covers the periods of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), and the Pottery Neolithic (PN).

The stratigraphy is divided into the following subphases according to the dominant architecture:[3]

  • round, PPNA
  • grill, PPNA
  • channeled, Early PPNB
  • cobble paved, Middle PPNB
  • cell, Late PPNB
  • large room, final PPNB

An analysis of blood found at the site suggested that human sacrifice occurred there.[4]

Origin of domestication

Animal life - domestication of pigs and cattle

Çayönü is possibly the place where the pig (Sus scrofa) was first domesticated.[5]

Farming - cultivation of cereals

Genetic studies of emmer wheat, the precursor of most current wheat species, show that the slopes of Mount Karaca (Karaca Dağ), which is located in close vicinity to Çayönü, was the location of first domestication. A different DNA approach pointed to Kartal Daği.[6]

Robert Braidwood wrote that "insofar as unit HA can be considered as representing all of the major pre-historic occupation at Cayonu, cultivated emmer along with cultivated einkorn was present from the earliest sub-phase."[7]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Çambel, H., Braidwood, R.J. (Eds.), The Joint Istanbul-Chicago Universities’ Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia. Istanbul University Publications 2589, Istanbul, 1980
  2. ↑ Özdoğan A. Çayönü In: Özdoğan M., Başgelen N., editors. Neolithic in Turkey: The Cradle of Civilization, New Discoveries. EGE Yayınları; Istanbul, pp. 35–64, 1999
  3. ↑ Pearson, J; Grove, M; Ozbek, M; Hongo, H (2013). "Food and social complexity at Çayönü Tepesi, southeastern Anatolia: Stable isotope evidence of differentiation in diet according to burial practice and sex in the early Neolithic". J Anthropol Archaeol. 32: 180–189. doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2013.01.002. PMC 4066944. PMID 24976671.
  4. ↑ Thomas H. Loy and Andrée R. Wood, Blood Residue Analysis at Çayönü Tepesi, Turkey, Journal of Field Archaeology, vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 451-460, (Winter, 1989)
  5. ↑ Ervynck A , Dobney K , Hongo H , Meadow R, Born Free? New Evidence for the Status of Sus scrofa at Neolithic Çayönü Tepesi (Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey), Paléorient, vol. 27, pp. 47–73, 2002
  6. ↑ Peter Civáň, Zuzana Ivaničová, Terence A. Brown, Reticulated Origin of Domesticated Emmer Wheat Supports a Dynamic Model for the Emergence of Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, PLOS One, November 29, 2013
  7. ↑ Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in Southeastern Turkey, 1972 by Braidwood et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. 568-572, February 1974


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