Evaluating the Impact of Black Sea Flooding on the Neolithic of Northern

Evaluating the impact of Black Sea ﬂooding on the Neolithic of northern Turkey

Peter Bikoulis

Abstract

Originally formulated based on marine geological research concerned with the timing and tempo of the Black Sea inﬁlling, the Black Sea ﬂood Hypothesis (BSfH) argues that this process was a catastrophic event ~7150 BP that greatly impacted the prehistoric peoples who lived along the ancient shoreline. The resulting mass migration of peoples led to great transformations across Europe and southwest Asia. Continued research in the region has challenged the timing and impact of the event, arguing instead that it was neither sudden nor catastrophic. However, the BSfH continues to be invoked as a plausible explanation for the lack of early Holocene or Neolithic period sites in northern Turkey. Results from spatial modelling along the Turkish coast suggest that the explanatory power of the BSfH to explain this absence is exaggerated. Rather, other environmental and social factors must be considered in explaining the complete lack of early Holocene sites across the region.

Keywords

Black Sea; Black Sea ﬂood Hypothesis; spatial analysis; bathymetric modelling; prehistoric Turkey; early Holocene/Neolithic; coastline change.

While other regions in Turkey have clear evidence of human occupation from earliest antiquity to the present, the Black Sea region is unique for having no convincing evidence of Neolithic habitation. Anatolian archaeologists have advanced numerous explanations for this conspicuous absence (Düring 2008). On the basis of marine geological research and historical reconstructions by Ryan and colleagues (Ryan and Pitman 1998; Ryan et al. 1997, 2003), archaeologists working in the region have adopted the Black Sea ﬂood Hypothesis (hereafter, BSfH) as a possible explanation for the lack of Neolithic sites (Ballard, Coleman, and Rosenberg 2000; Ballard et al. 2001; Hiebert 2001; Özdoğan 2011a; Ward and Ballard 2004). Continued research since the late 1990s has led to major corrections of Ryan and colleagues’ original interpretations of the geological evidence, calling into question the timing and scale of the Black Sea inﬁlling (Giosan, Filip, and Constatinescu 2009; Yanko-Hombach, Gilbert, and Dolukhanov 2007).

Geologists have all but rejected the BSfH, and many now seek a way past the entire debate (Buynevich et al. 2011). However, archaeologists working in northern Turkey have been slow to reject the BSfH and similar arguments based on coastline changes as an explanation for the lack of Neolithic sites in the region (Ballard et al. 2001; Coleman and Ballard 2007; Hiebert 2001; Özdoğan 1997). This paper tests the main tenants of the BSfH as applied to the Turkish Black Sea region, focusing on how the supposed ﬂooding may have affected site distributions using a combination of bathymetric data and simulation modelling within a Geographical Information System (GIS). The results suggest that the power of the BSfH to explain the absence of Neolithic sites in the region is greatly exaggerated. Rather, environmental or societal factors must be considered that may have affected the visibility or even existence of Neolithic sites.

1. Anatolian archaeology and the Black Sea ﬂood Hypothesis

The Black Sea is a brackish body of water connected to the Mediterranean system by the Dardanelles and Bosporus spillway. It has undergone a long history of geological and ecological change, transforming dramatically in the early Holocene following its connection to the Mediterranean Sea. One of the major research questions occupying geologists and geographers has been the timing, degree and tempo of the Black Sea’s evolution (Aksu, Hiscott, Yaşar, et al. 2002; Cordova et al. 2009; Degens and Ross 1972; Giosan, Filip, and Constatinescu 2009; Hiscott and Aksu 2002; Hiscott, Aksu, Mudie, Kaminski, et al. 2007; Major et al. 2006; Marret et al. 2009; McHugh et al. 2008; Ryan et al. 1997, 2003; Yanko-Hombach 2007; Yanko- Hombach et al. 2014; Yanko-Hombach, Gilbert, and Dolukhanov 2007). The BSfH is arguably the best-known view held among marine geologists, although some have voiced major dis- agreements over the nature and extent of the inﬁlling, and how it may have affected human populations (Yanko-Hombach, Gilbert, and Dolukhanov 2007; Yanko-Hombach 2007). While primarily a view established on the basis of academic research, the BSfH has also been advanced at the popular level; its most sensationalist claims have primarily targeted the general public (Ryan and Pitman 1998; Wilson 2004) and educated laymen (Kerr 1998; Stone 1999). As Mehmet Özdoğan (2007, 653) has astutely noted, the buzz around the theory and its implications led to a situation in which

Media coverage of the hypothesis soon led to neglect of the geological research in favor of the spectacular cultural repercussions, luring the popular imagination toward issues such as the biblical ﬂood story, the impact of cataclysmic events on collective memory, the begin- nings and spread of agriculture, and massive migrations.

Therefore, any discussion of the current status of the BSfH must contend with both scholarly research reports and the frequently bold declarations by leading proponents in press releases and popular books.

1.1 Review of the BSfH: evidence and argument Claims for a cataclysmic ﬂooding event are based on deep-sea core extraction in the early 1990s (Ryan et al. 1997, 2003). The pioneering work of Ryan and colleagues was conducted as part of 758 Impact of Black Sea ﬂooding on northern Turkey

Figure 1 Map of Black Sea macro-region, showing approximate locations of deep-sea coring (Ryan) and underwater archaeological survey (Ballard).

a joint American-Russian research team (Ryan et al. 1997) with research areas on the Ukrainian shelf and south of the Kerch Strait in the Crimea (Fig. 1). Their research detected an erosional surface strewn with organics along the Black Sea continental shelf, suggesting the presence of a palaeoshoreline. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating of euryhaline fauna like molluscs, which would have predated any connection with the saline Mediterranean Sea, led Ryan and collaborators to claim that the Black Sea flooding started around 7,150 ± 100 yr BP. In addition to north Pontic marine geology, Ryan and colleagues looked at marine profiles of the Dardanelles, which also suggested that the Sea of Marmara and Black Sea were connected to the Mediterranean by rising global water levels at that time. They argued that a similar erosional surface found by seismic reflection conducted by the Turkish Navy was created by this connection in the Dardanelles and that sediment accumulated on it only after this catastrophic event. Ryan and colleagues suggested that the flooding was on the order of nearly 50km3 per day, amounting to a visible increase of the water level at ‘10’s of cm/day’ (Ryan et al. 1997, 124). At these rates, the basin would have been flooded within a matter of years, if not months. According to Ryan and Pitman (1998), anyone living along the palaeoshoreline of the Black Sea would have been experienced these events as catastrophic, leading to massive displacements of people living along the sea’s former coast. In dramatic fashion, they describe a situation where P. Bikoulis 759

The level of the lake began to rise six inches a day, immediately inundating the deltas and invading the flat river valleys – moving upstream at as much as a mile each day, without pause hour after hour, day after day, drowning the less agile, forcing all else upriver or up onto the desertlike plateau through which the valley had been cut. It is hard to imagine the terror of those farmers, forced from their fields by an event they could not understand, a force of such incredible violence that it was as if the collected fury of all the gods was being hurled a them. They fled with family, the old and the young, carrying what they could, along with fragments of the other languages, new ideas, and new technologies gathered from around the lake. (Ryan and Pitman 1998, 235)

Massive demic migration because of the rising sea level is argued to have resettled Black Sea peoples across Europe, the Urals and Caucasus and the Near East (see Ryan and Pitman 1998, 188–201). For instance, they speculate that the migration of these groups westward gave rise to well-known Eastern European cultures like the VinčaandLinearbandkeramik (LBK). Next, under this scenario, the Urals and the regions north of the Crimea were colonized by a northward migration, leading to the emergence of proto-Indo-European culture. Finally, peoples along the Turkish and Georgian coasts are thought to have wandered southward. Migrants from the Turkish coast are speculated to have colonized Central Anatolia, becoming the founding population for later Neolithic sites like Çatalhöyük. Likewise, refugees from the Caucasus eventually gave rise to the Halaf and ‘Ubaid culture of Mesopotamia. Some geologists credit such large-scale demic diffusions from the former Black Sea littoral with the onset of the Neolithic of Europe (Turney and Brown 2007). Regrettably, few archaeologists have corrected these claims. However, more recent geological research has demonstrated that this view of the formation of the Black Sea as a violent and rapid event is fundamentally mistaken (Abrajano et al. 2002; Aksu, Hiscott, Kaminski, et al. 2002; Aksu, Hiscott, and Yaşar 1999; Hiscott and Aksu 2002; Hiscott, Aksu, Mudie, Kaminski, et al. 2007; Hiscott, Aksu, Mudie, Marret, et al. 2007; Hiscott et al. 2002; Mudie, Rochon, and Aksu 2002; Yaltirak et al. 2002). In contrast to the BSfH, a number of geologists have put forward what is referred to as the Outflow Hypothesis, which argues that the brackish conditions were initiated once the Black Sea breached the Bosporus sill (Aksu, Hiscott, Mudie, et al. 2002). Rather, it is now understood that the formation of the Black Sea was a gradual and less impactful event. On the basis of research in the Marmara Gateway and Aegean, the connection between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean via the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, Aksu, Hiscott, Mudie, et al. (2002) have argued that the primary evidence that Ryan and colleagues used to argue for a rapid flooding – namely molluscs – is more likely the result of the two-way flow of brackish and saline waters. They argued that this two-way flow of water, with outflow from the upper stratum expelling fresher waters from the Black Sea (fed by major Eurasian rivers such as the Danube, Dnieper, Dniester and Don) and the lower stratum bringing saline ocean water in from the Aegean, would have caused the unique observed proprieties of its stratified water column. Their findings suggest that Black Sea water levels rose over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This version of the Black Sea’s formation history during the early Holocene suggests that impacts would have been minimal on those who may have resided along its edge. These new results show a much more gradual and non-catastrophic filling of the Black Sea, strongly challenging theories of culture change that are based on the migration of newly displaced farmers rapidly colonizing different regions of Europe and southwestern Asia. 760 Impact of Black Sea flooding on northern Turkey

1.2 Use of the BSfH as explanation in Anatolian prehistory While the new consensus in marine geology may be that the infilling of the Black Sea was a non-event with little discernible impact at the level of the individual lifetime, most accounts by archaeologists working in the greater Black Sea region, and northern Turkey in particular, concerning the flood’s impact seem to retain a catastrophic view (see Ivanova 2013,14–16). Exemplifying such views, some have speculated that ‘the resulting inundation of the shoreline certainly would have had an impact upon the coastal population’ (Hiebert 2001, 13). The rapid flooding proposed by the BSfH has served as an explanation for why there are no recorded early Holocene sites in the entire Black Sea region of Turkey. As early as the 1950s, archaeologists working in the region had noticed the complete absence of Neolithic sites. Commenting on the possible identification of Neolithic pottery by Seton-Williams (1948, 48) at the barrow site of Toiz Köprü (Taşköprü), near Tepe Delik in Kastamonu province, Charles Burney emphatically denied this possibility as ‘there is not a trace of Neolithic occupation in the whole of northern Anatolia’ (Burney 1956, 189). The situation has not been ameliorated in the slightest after continued research more than fifty years later (Doonan 2004; Düring 2008, 2013; Düring and Glatz 2010; Düring, Glatz, and Şerifoğlu 2012; Glatz, Düring, and Şerifoğlu 2011;Işın 1998; Karauğuz and Düring 2009; Matthews and Glatz 2009). The application of the BSfH in northern Anatolia is taken as a leading explanation for this reality. Underwater explorer Robert Ballard, made famous for his 1985 discovery of the Titanic wreckage, is arguably the best-known proponent of this view (Ballard, Coleman, and Rosenberg 2000; Ballard et al. 2001; Coleman and Ballard 2007; Coleman, Ballard, and Gregory 2003; Ward and Ballard 2004). Leading an international team of researchers, Ballard carried out deep- sea exploration off the coast of Sinop in north-central Turkey (Fig. 1). The initial field season in 1999 discovered what appeared to be the remains of a palaeoshoreline some 150m below the present sea level (Ballard, Coleman, and Rosenberg 2000). Radiocarbon dates from marine fauna (i.e., molluscs) found in the organic-rich sediment provide a rough date for the ancient beach of 7400 yrs BP. This seemed to confirm Ryan and colleagues’ assertion of a catastrophic flood. According to the 1999 press release by the National Geographic Society, which partly funded the expedition, ‘Robert Ballard has found conclusive proof that a flood of Biblical proportions inundated an area north of Turkey about 7,500 years ago – a timetable and location that virtually match the Old Testament account of Noah’ (cited in Pleins 2003, 18). Following up this widely publicized success, another field season the following year brought even more surprising discoveries. Systematic underwater survey using two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) named Argus and Little Hercules was conducted to look for evidence of human occupation. The 2000 season discovered a number of archaeological features off the coast of Sinop, including the remains of four vessels (ships A–D) and a possible man-made structure (site 82) (Ballard et al. 2001; Coleman and Ballard 2007; Coleman, Ballard, and Gregory 2003). Site 82 consisted of over thirty rectangular stone blocks with large amounts of wood sticking out from the silted landscape. It was theorized that the debris were the remains of an early Holocene occupation site, superbly preserved because of the anoxic environment (Ballard et al. 2001). Radiocarbon dates from wooden remains collected from two sample areas at site 82 returned thoroughly modern ages (all younger than cal. AD 1750), although the researchers denied a connection between the modern wood and the possible early Holocene site. In reaction to this apparent confirmation of his initial proposal, Ryan is reported to have said that Ballard’s P. Bikoulis 761 discovery would ‘rewrite the history of ancient civilizations because it shows unequivocally that the Black Sea Flood took place and that the ancient shores of the Black Sea were occupied by humans’ (cited in Wilson 2004, 57). Ballard and colleagues were much more moderate in their estimation, observing that ‘the results are consistent with the hypothesis that this location is a submerged habitation site but do not confirm it’ (Ballard et al. 2001, 615). Elsewhere, the results of the expedition were moderated even further, maintaining that ‘this site [site 82] and the general vicinity need to be investigated further in order to confirm or reject the hypothesis of a Neolithic origin for the objects’ (Coleman and Ballard 2007, 687). Further exploration in 2003 focused on revisiting the four shipwrecks and site 82. While examination of the shipwrecks has provided important information concerning maritime traffic and economy along the Black Sea littoral during the medieval period, the result of examination of Site 82 was thoroughly underwhelming. As summarized by Coleman and Ballard (2007, 686), Site 82 initially ‘appeared to have non-natural looking stone blocks and wood that, because of their shape and orientation, gave the appearance of having been worked and modified by humans’. However, it is ‘now considered to represent a geological rather than an archaeological feature’ (Ward and Horlings 2008, 151). This means that the stone foundations and wooden uprights that were trumpeted in the press releases were not the remains of a Neolithic house, and that they were not even anthropogenic. The reclassification of this once ‘conclusive proof’ that early Holocene villagers had lived on the ancient shores of the Black Sea has resulted in the veritable elision of Site 82 from subsequent publications and complete erasure of the original research question seeking to locate early Holocene occupations (Brennan et al. 2011; Piechota et al. 2010; Ward and Ballard 2004; Ward and Horlings 2008). However, many Anatolian archaeologists have not yet fully absorbed this far-reaching disconfirmation of possible human occupation off the coast of Sinop. Many have not even registered the change in the published interpretations of the Black Sea deep-water surveys, and those of Site 82 in particular. The discovery is generally perceived as succeeding in ‘revealing some submerged remains of an undetermined period’ (Özdoğan 2011a, 226), or, again, ‘The idea that “site 82” is Neolithic cannot be substantiated at present’ (Düring 2008, 21). These views of an as-yet to be precisely determined prehistoric occupation are maintained rather than the reality that it is no longer considered anthropogenic. More generally, such views seem to preserve the plausibility of finding early Holocene sites through further underwater exploration even though – at present at least – they are actually absent. It would appear that no one wants to say definitively that the results of the underwater expeditions have so far failed to provide the requisite data to support extraordinary claims that catastrophic flooding has submerged early Holocene sites.

2. Spatial modelling of the Turkish Black Sea region

Two related kinds of spatial analyses were conducted to test whether the BSfH provides a plausible explanation for the lack of early Holocene sites in northern Anatolia. The ﬁrst consists of a simulation model created to generate expected values that could be compared to known site distributions and densities. The second involves identifying potential habitation zones on the basis of underwater topography. Both analyses incorporate below-sea-level modelling based on bathymetric data. The bathymetry was combined with a standard geopolitical map of Turkey 762 Impact of Black Sea ﬂooding on northern Turkey within the Geographical Information System (GIS). The open-source Geographic Resources Analysis Support System or GRASS GIS was used to perform all manipulations of spatial data and modelling (GRASS Development Team 2015).

2.1 Description of data and sources 2.1.1 Site catalogue The data used in this analysis consist of a catalogue containing 419 sites dating to the Neolithic. This list was generated from the ongoing work of the Türkiye Arkeolojik Yerleşmeleri Projesi or TAY Project, from both print (Harmankaya, Tanindi, and Özbaşaran 1997) and online editions (http://www.tayproject.org). The range of the contributions was from the early twentieth century to as recent as 2012. The regional site totals represent a combination of different types of sites, but mounded or höyük settlement sites are by far the most common from the Neolithic onwards. Site counts were grouped at the national census level, which traditionally divides the country of Turkey into seven major regions (Dewdney 1971)(Fig. 2). While extremely coarse, the temporal boundary of the Neolithic spanned occupations from c. 12 to 7 ka BP. Two sites, Kayabasi and Sokukayasi, were included in the catalogue despite the doubtful status of their identification as Neolithic occupations. Both classifications are based solely on a small quantity of material collected from surface survey. It should be noted that the chronological brackets of the Neolithic period used here straddle the timing of the proposed Black Sea flood, with sites dating before and after the event.

2.1.2 Bathymetric data The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) (http:// www.gebco.net) one-minute grid 2008 bathymetric data was used to model depth below sea level. It was obtained from the British Oceanographic Data Service (BODS) (http://www.bodc.

Figure 2 Frequency of Neolithic sites by province according to census region (as of August 2014). P. Bikoulis 763 ac.uk). While the GEBCO 2008 bathymetric data has a spatial resolution of one arc-minute for the entire planet, the Black Sea data came resampled to 30-arc seconds. The original GEBCO bathymetric ﬁle was transformed to latitude and longitude (Datum, WGS 1984) to carry out all spatial modelling of such a large area of interest.

2.2 Monte Carlo and site distribution model A probabilistic spatial model was used to generate expected site distributions to compare to those of known sites. Below sea level modelling was carried out for all areas that would have been affected by global sea level changes, namely both the Black Sea coast of Turkey and the Sea of Marmara. Water-level increases in both areas would in turn have decreased the total space that prehistoric peoples could have settled, forcing them to higher altitudes because the impact of coastline change differed between the two major bodies of water during the early Holocene. A depth of 50m was used for the Sea of Marmara following the most recently available geological data (Hiscott, Aksu, Mudie, Marret, et al. 2007). A notional depth of 150m was used in line with the work of Ryan et al. (Ryan and Pitman 1998; Ryan et al. 1997). Topographic contours at appropriate levels were extracted from the bathymetric data and joined to a modern geopolitical map of Turkey within the GIS to form a base map modelling the maximal extent of exposed area in the early Holocene. The formerly exposed landmass was divided into three parts, with the entire Sea of Marmara taken as its own region and new exposed area along the Black Sea littoral divided into two parts (Fig. 3). A simulation model was used to benchmark site distribution expectations. A Monte Carlo using 1,000 iterations was conducted to generate probabilities that sites would be located within a particular region using the same number of known sites. These results were then compared to the distribution of known sites at the census region scale (Table 1). For statistical comparison, the results of the simulation were used as the expected values for the calculation of ‘goodness- of-fit’ (χ2Þ between the two datasets. The finding of significant differences between the observed distribution of prehistoric sites and the randomly generated set suggests that we should not assume that sites will be equally located in all areas of Turkey with the same density. As anticipated, the number of simulated sites in each region was highly correlated (r2 > 0.95) to the total area. However, there was a very low correlation between actual site frequency and area, suggesting that factors other than area are at work on the distribution of known sites across all time periods examined. This result should be interpreted as pointing to factors other than simple area acting on the location of sites across Anatolia. Therefore, arguments based on increasing the total area that could have been inhabited by Neolithic peoples, as found in the application of the BSfH to northern Anatolia, should not be expected to produce encouraging results.

2.2.1 Profile of submerged areas based on Bathymetric modelling Focusing on those regions identified by the BSfH as possible areas containing submerged sites, further spatial modelling sought to factor out what were deemed to be those zones not conducive to habitation or agriculture within areas that would have been exposed by lowered sea levels. If Neolithic farmers inhabited these now submerged areas, where within these areas would they have likely elected to settle? An important factor determining the location of village-farming settlements and outfields is slope (Grigg 1995). Three major slope classifications were derived from further modelling using the GEBCO bathymetric dataset. Slopes less than 15 degrees were classified as ‘gentle’ and most suitable for habitation. Slopes from 16 to 25 degrees were defined as 764 Impact of Black Sea flooding on northern Turkey

Figure 3 Three regions identiﬁed by below-sea level spatial modelling.

‘intermediate’, while slopes greater than 26 degrees were classified as ‘steep’ and unsuitable for farming (Fig. 4). Comparison of the three regions found that the area located in the north of Istanbul (Black Sea Area 1) offered the most area out of the three regions conducive for agriculture based on the model’s input parameters, while the submerged areas in the Sea of Marmara and Black Sea Area 2 offered the least. Slope analysis provided a good opportunity to evaluate whether submerged areas provided sufficient space for proposed early Holocene village-farmers to settle. More expansive zones of low overall slope would have been more attractive for settlement, and would likely have been targeted first by village farmers. These results suggest that the submerged area of the Turkish Black Sea coast (Black Sea Area 2), presumably concealing all Neolithic occupation for the region, does not provide sufficient opportunity for the practice of agro-pastoral lifeways. This further lowers the probability that Neolithic sites are located under the sea. Moreover, underwater surveys conducted off the coast P. Bikoulis 765

Table 1 Comparison of real and simulated Neolithic site distribution by region (as of August 2014). Neolithic Region Actual Simulated

Aegean 53 45.707 Black Sea 2* 62.215 Central 115 97.58 Eastern 5 77.515 Marmara 48 38.3 Mediterranean 100 46.936 Southwest 96 39.443 Submerged Area (total) 0 11.304 Total 419 Mean 52.375 SD 47.265 26.453 Correlation (r2) freq./area 0.95488 0.00089 χ2 284.08 df 7 p <0.0001

Note Asterisk (*) indicates highly doubtful identiﬁcations

Figure 4 Slope classification of three regions below sea level. 766 Impact of Black Sea flooding on northern Turkey of Sinop by Ballard concentrated in an area that had low overall slope – a zone that should theoretically have a high probability of finding such sites – suggest that the failure to find Neolithic sites in this optimal zone reflects the even lower potential for adjacent less-than-ideal areas.

3. Assessing the impact of ﬂooding on site distributions in the Black Sea region

Changing coastlines most certainly had great impact on prehistoric peoples in the past, and on the preservation of archaeological heritage in the present (Bailey et al. 2007; Cooke 1987; Galili et al. 2009; Kennett and Kennett 2006; Lacroix et al. 2014; Lambeck 1996; Phillips 1993). For instance, site distributions in the Arctic are strongly correlated with the lowering shoreline due to the process of isostatic rebound; sites tend to get younger as the elevation decreases (Andrews, McGhee, and Mckenzie-Pollock 1971). However, rarely have changes to ancient shorelines been responsible for the complete erasure of an entire chronological period at the regional level. Even in the dramatic scenarios that Lambeck (1996) proposes in his model for the Persian Gulf littoral beginning around 18,000 BP, there is not a total disappearance of human activity from a singular time period in southern Mesopotamia. So-called ‘hidden landscape’ arguments do not set out to explain the complete absence of a single chronological period, but merely the underrepresentation of prehistoric sites in general even with the use of intensive survey methods (Bintliff, Howard, and Snodgrass 1999). Likewise, geological pro- cesses may lead to underrepresented periods, as may have been the case in Central Anatolia (Summers 2002) and southern Levant (Banning, Rahimi, and Siggers 1994), but do not completely delete them from the archaeological record of an entire region. It is almost certain that submerged archaeological sites exist along the Turkish coastline, especially in the area now under the current sea level in the Marmara region. Recent excavations at Yenikapı, a late Neolithic site (c. 5200–4250 cal. BC) found during construction associated with the expanding Marmaray Metro line in İstanbul, clearly demonstrate this reality (Kiziltan and Polat 2013). In addition to this, abundant evidence elsewhere clearly indicates that Neolithic peoples lived in the Marmara/İstanbul region. Their presence, in the form of the well-attested Fikirtepe culture, is archaeologically recognizable and corroborated by extensive excavations and radiocarbon dates (Özdoğan 2013; Özdoğan and Gatsov 1998). Significant sites such as Fikirtepe – the defining type-site – Pendik and Hoca Çeşme all have yielded incontrovertible evidence for human occupation during the early Holocene. Yet, more area was submerged in the Marmara and İstanbul regions, the Sea of Marmara and Black Sea Area 1, respectively, than in Black Sea Area 2, or along the entire northern coast. The simulation model predicts that very few sites (<1 per cent) would be located in this area to the north, while at the same time predicting many more sites in the region proper than are currently known to exist. Given the low probability that sites would be located in this sliver of formerly exposed area and nowhere else within the entire Black Sea census region, the changing coastline cannot be used as a plausible explanation for why the Black Sea region of Turkey has so far yielded no definite evidence for Neolithic occupations. The appeal of the BSfH seems to be that it proposes that the failure to locate Neolithic sites in the region is because archaeologists are limiting their search to terrestrial Anatolia. In essence, the application of the BSfH to northern Turkey suggests that there may be sites in areas that are P. Bikoulis 767 not easily accessible by researchers, namely under the sea. Simply increasing our search area, so the argument would go, would increase the likelihood of locating Neolithic sites. Based on a statistical comparison to randomized results, there are significant differences in the number of actual and simulated site distributions for the major geographical regions during the periods investigated. Likewise, there is a low correlation between number of extant sites and region area, which suggests that area was not a primary basis for site distributions. In line with the overall picture of the modelling, I propose that the absence of evidence for human occupation in the Black Sea region be taken as evidence that long-term or fully sedentary villagers did not inhabit the region during the early Holocene. Arguments requiring an increased search area do not fully explain the absence of Neolithic sites in the region. The view advanced here is that the problem of the missing Black Sea Neolithic does not reside in the archaeological record, but rather in the expectations researchers bring to it. Arguably the greatest source of confusion is the misuse of language, as researchers have not used ‘early Holocene’ as a strictly geological term. Instead, it has been used as shorthand to define the incipient Neolithic – a cultural and technological sequence. This conflation of cultural development and geological chronology has led to the expectation that early village-farmers must have inhabited northern Anatolia from 10,000 to 6,000 cal. BC. This would be in line with culture-historic sequences found in other regions in Turkey that yield evidence for a Palaeolithic-Neolithic-Chalcolithic temporal sequence. Furthermore, there seems to be a con- comitant expectation that Neolithic sites be found with the same densities as in other parts of Turkey. Therefore, the complete absence of these sites on land is explained by arguing they are all located under the sea. However, these expectations cannot be taken for granted a priori, nor accepted unchallenged in the face of increasingly discouraging results. Comparison to adjacent regions provides even more unpromising results. Even though Eastern Anatolia has very few identified Neolithic sites (n = 5), they are still visible archaeologically. It is critical to state that these sites are located in the southern part of the region, while the entire north is also completely lacking in Neolithic settlement (Fig. 2). It is quite obvious that Neolithic sites are located almost exclusively along the southern periphery, moving into Central Anatolia and then into the Marmara/İstanbul region. This arc follows both a geographical and a temporal trend, confirming the views of Özdoğan (2011b) of an identifiable north-westward movement of Neolithic lifeways across Turkey. This radiation from the Levant seems to have entirelybypassedthenorthernTurkishcoast. The likely reason for this is that the Pontic mountains, a formidable range that all but cuts off the coastal zone from the rest of Turkey, created a barrier for Neolithic peoples and their way of life as they moved north and westward from Central Anatolia (Schoop 2005; Özdoğan 2011b). Instead, if human groups indeed occupied the region of north-central Anatolia during the early Holocene, then they were most likely small, highly mobile foraging groups exploiting the ecological mosaic that marks the Black Sea region (Sherratt 2004). These groups could have been a persistence of Upper Palaeolithic traditions seen at such well-known cave sites as Üçağızlı (Kuhn 2002; Kuhn 2004; Kuhn et al. 2009) and Yarımburgaz (Farrand and McMahon 1997; Stiner, Arsebük, and Clark Howell 1996). However, it is not altogether clear whether the radiation of Upper Palaeolithic human groups reached the northern coast of Turkey as they moved north into the Caucasus and northwest into south-eastern Europe (Bar-Yosef, Belfer-Cohen, and Adler 2006). More likely, these groups could be identified as ‘Mesolithic’ in 768 Impact of Black Sea flooding on northern Turkey the European sense of post-Glacial foraging groups that maintained a variable degree of mobility. According to Sherratt (2004, 61), the absence of Neolithic settlements in the Black Sea region specifically may have been the product of Mesolithic ‘resistance’ to encroaching village-farmers from Central Anatolia. These hunter-gatherers may have defended their claims to the rich biodiversity of the Black Sea region, successfully repelling any colonization efforts. Regardless of terminology, low population numbers of these mobile forager bands would naturally lead to extremely low-density distributions of artefacts in the past for archaeologists to collect and identify in the present. The dramatic appearance of Chalcolithic sites in the Black Sea region may point to a late- fifth- or early-fourth-millennium BC colonization of the region by village farmers from the west. The most prominent and best excavated is the site of İkiztepe (Alkım, Alkım, and Bilgi 1988, 2003). It is believed that İkiztepe was founded directly on the mid-Holocene littoral, which runs counter to the expectations of the BSfH view that sites would be located away from palaeoshor- elines in remembrance of catastrophic flooding. The earliest radiocarbon dates for İkiztepe place it firmly in the mid-Holocene, with the earliest dates beginning approximately 4300 cal. BC (Alkım, Alkım, and Bilgi 2003; Özbakan 1988). Such a late occupation as compared to other regions of Turkey requires an explanation. The view of Black Sea prehistory advanced here theorizes that it was not until the early Holocene that farmers reached the Marmara/İstanbul region, and that an eastward coastal migration was possible during the mid-Holocene, most likely ‘leap-frogging’ from river valley to river valley along the Black Sea coastline. Demic diffusion in this manner is viewed as the principal mechanism for the colonization of Europe during the Neolithic (Sherratt 2004). The explosive growth of settlements in the Early Bronze Age throughout the region may have its origins in the expansion of these early settler groups moving into new zones as population levels increased in the initial core areas.

4. Conclusion

Archaeologists working in northern Anatolia have been too quick to accept the BSfH as a plausible explanation for the absence of early Holocene occupations across the region. The evidential support for the argument, based on the deep-sea research of Ryan and colleagues, has quickly collapsed under the burden of close scrutiny by marine geologists. Bathymetric data were used in order to provide a realistic model for the total area that could have been exposed for habitation. The changes in depth were not uniform across the entire Turkish coastline, and these differences must be taken into account when discussing possible impacts on site presence (or absence). No proponent of the archaeological application of the BSfH has taken this into account. Previous attempts at modelling the geographical effect of the BSfH have not considered the Marmara/İstanbul area, focusing solely on the exposed areas along the Black Sea palaeoshoreline (Turney and Brown 2007). The rapid infilling of the Black Sea would have simultaneously affected those communities surrounding the ancient shoreline of the Sea of Marmara and displaced populations in this area must also be factored into any historical reconstruction. However, archaeologists working in these other regions in Turkey affected by shoreline change have not felt the need to resort to arguments such as the BSfH because there is abundant evidence for early Holocene occupation. The same could be said for other parts of the Black Sea littoral, where archaeologists working in Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine and Russia P. Bikoulis 769 readily find evidence for Neolithic occupation (Dergachev and Dolukhanov 2007; Gaskevych 2011; Gurova 2008; Kotova 2009; Stanko 2007; Telegin 1987). Moreover, these other regions are much better contenders than northern Turkey for potential submerged sites on the basis of total submerged area. While an attractive proposal, the application of the BSfH to northern Turkey is problematic, not least because it fails to explain satisfactorily the complete absence of Neolithic sites. The primary arguments of the BSfH have been examined using spatial modelling techniques and have been found wanting. Even when the Turkish landmass is expanded to include once- exposed areas, the results of the slope analysis fail to convince that there would have been sufficient area for village-farmers to settle. While the BSfH has a certain appeal as an argument, suggesting that it is possible that Neolithic sites have not been discovered because they are now submerged, it has been the objective of this paper to show that this possibility is not very probable. Rather than pursuing an illusionary Neolithic, it seems more productive in the end to focus attention on the rich prehistoric record of the region, namely the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age periods.

Acknowledgements

This essay was initially presented at the 2014 European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) annual meeting in İstanbul. I would like to thank Dr Ivanova and Dr S. Sherratt for being such amiable session chairs. I would also like to thank the editors of this Debates volume, Dr Bogaard and Dr Conolly, and the two anonymous reviewers for their supportive comments and helpful suggestions. My supervisor Dr Banning and colleague Dr Duffy at the University of Toronto read an earlier version of this paper and provided excellent recommendations for improvement. I alone am responsible for any failings that remain after so many better eyes have read these words.

Disclosure statement

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the author.

Peter Bikoulis Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 19 Russell St., Toronto, ON, M5S 2S2, Canada [email protected]

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Peter Bikoulis is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He has carried out ﬁeldwork in Canada, Jordan, and Turkey. His research focuses on the emergence of complex societies along the Turkish Black Sea coast using a variety of Geographical Information Science techniques. Copyright of World Archaeology is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.