New Considerations and Revelations Regarding the Anthropomorphic Clay Figurines of Alişar Höyük
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ANATOLICA XL, 2014 NEW CONSIDERATIONS AND REVELATIONS REGARDING THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC CLAY FIGURINES OF ALIŞAR HÖYÜK Shannon Martino Abstract The site of Alişar Höyük in north central Anatolia has long been known to be one of great importance as well as a site riddled with chronological issues, especially regarding its early periods. Given recent reconsiderations regarding the dating of the site as well as my own examination of the site’s fi nds in the collection of the Oriental Institute new insights about the site’s place in interregional networks have come to light. A classifi cation of the fi gurines from Alişar Höyük and their relationship to contemporary fi gurines forms the basis of this work.1 Several fi gurines that have never before been published or in some cases even inventoried are included in this analysis. Because so many sites have been excavated in Turkey and neighboring countries since the excavation of Alişar Höyük, this reconsideration of the site’s fi gurines is due. We can now illustrate the extensive nature of networks that ran through Alişar Höyük from its earliest levels. These networks spanned from southeast Europe to central Anatolia and beyond and seem to show that, culturally, Alişar Höyük was initially oriented to the west and north, particularly to southeast Europe and northern Anatolia, and only later began to develop traditions unique to the site and/or central Anatolia. INTRODUCTION Alişar Höyük is a large tell site about 45 km from Yozgat, located near the source of the Konak and Delice Su, rivers that join the Kızılırmak to the west. A creek fl ows past the site and into the Konak Su.2 As one of two large tells in the region it is composed of two terraces, one measured 520 x 350 meters at the base with an average elevation of 5-8 meters above the valley and the other, Mound A measured at 245 x 145 meters at the base with the highest elevation at 24.25 m. Three other mounds were named, B-D, and several tumuli are found in the surrounding region. Excavations fi rst began at the site in 1927 with the work of H.H. von der Osten and E.F. Schmidt continuing until 1936. The excavations were published in several volumes as well as in several articles, though after 1932 much went undocumented. Research at the site of Alişar Höyük currently falls under the purview of the Alişar Regional Project which was directed until recently by Ronald Gorny, from the University of Chicago, and is now led by Gregory McMahon. Within the Alişar Regional Survey project area there are a few other mounds, which are, or possibly are, also the location of Early Bronze Age and earlier settlements: Çadır Höyük (currently being excavated), Büyük Ören 1 The classifi cation of the fi gurines presented in this paper is as defi ned in the author’s 2012 dissertation, which created a typology of almost 2000 fi gurines from Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Anatolia and the Balkans. 2 Von der Osten & Schmidt 1932 (1927 I): 44; see image on page 45. 112 SHANNON MARTINO Höyük, Salur Höyük, Küçük Höyük, Orta Höyük, and Otlu Höyük;3 yet besides Yarıkkaya4 and probably Alişar Höyük, no sites on the north-central plateau are known to have been occupied during the fi fth millennium or earlier. Confusion over the conclusions of the 1927 to mid-1930s excavation of Alişar Höyük,5 and biases caused by the resulting relative dates established in relation to Mesopotamia led to major diffi culties with the stratigraphy and typological schemes in north-central Anatolia which many have since tried to clarify.6 As the fi rst major excavation in north-central Anatolia to have levels assigned to the Late Chalcolithic, the fi ndings at Alişar Höyük unavoidably skewed the dating of later excavated sites in the region. For example, those who worked in central Turkey assumed that the absence of Late Chalcolithic Mesopotamian cultures in central Anatolia, as observed in the sequence of Alişar Höyük, meant that there were no sites with habitations earlier than 3000 BC in central Anatolia.7 This was despite the fact that beneath the Early Bronze II (dated c. 2500 BC at the time) levels at Alişar Höyük there were twenty meters of other occupational layers. Given the proliferation of excavation both in Turkey and in countries neighboring Turkey since Alişar Höyük’s excavation the time is overdue for a reevaluation of Alişar Höyük’s stratigraphy and fi nds. This can be done with a view to the site’s role in regional and interregional networks during prehistory. My recent work with the anthropomorphic fi gurines from Alişar Höyük made it clear how far reaching those networks were, from southeast Europe to central Anatolia during the Late Chalcolithic. Delving into the collections of the Oriental Institute alerted me to previously unpublished and, in some cases, uninventoried fi gurines from Alişar Höyük necessitating their reevaluation and publication. The 115-20 anthropomorphic clay fi gurines that were excavated at Alişar Höyük are essential to the story of communication in the region.8 Part of the diffi cultly in understanding Alişar Höyük’s role in regional networks is due to the nomenclature for the site’s levels, for it has had both Chalcolithic and Copper Age levels, as well as several levels renumbered and renamed in the course of excavations (Table 1). Sharon Steadman has noted that, von der Osten’s ascription of Copper Age to levels 11-10M was due more to the fact that copper objects fi rst appeared in these levels than to an impression or conclusion about the date of these levels.9 Later, the term Chalcolithic was used to apply to levels thought to be Neolithic because copper traces were found in level 18M.10 In fact, the pottery styles do not change from level 15-11M and there just is not a large enough well-stratifi ed sample size from each level to compose a ceramic sequence. 3 Gorny, McMahon, Paley, Steadman & Verhaaren 1999: 161. 4 Hauptmann 1969. 5 Steadman, Ross, McMahon & Gorny 2008: 73. 6 Van den Hout 1984; Steadman & McMahon 2011; Schoop 2005. 7 Özdoğan 1996. 8 Five of the fi gurines are too fragmentary to determine if they are fi gurines, a rhyton, or perhaps some other fi gural object, but they do have some of the characteristics of fi gurines. 9 Steadman, Ross, McMahon & Gorny 2008: 73. 10 Von der Osten 1937 (1930-2 I): 30. ANATOLICA XL, 2014 113 Many people have suggested, in fact, that Alişar Höyük’s Copper Age levels belong to the Middle to Late Chalcolithic11, though more often they are assigned to the Early Bronze Age. The excavation process itself was hindered by the depth of the Chalcolithic and Copper Age levels from the surface of the tell; it was as much as 30.4 meters in some places.12 The oldest layers had to be excavated using a basket and pulley system. Levels 19-15M, belonging to the Late Chalcolithic, were excavated in a smaller than 5 x 5 meter excavation area. Levels 14-12M, also belonging to the Late Chalcolithic, came from a small trench of less than 20 x 10 meters. Defi ning the beginning of the Early Bronze Age levels at Alişar Höyük is also not without its diffi culties.13 Though generally heavily red slipped handmade vessels are thought to belong to the Early Bronze Age, Von der Osten had insisted that they were fi rst found in the Copper Age levels, 11-10M, of Alişar Höyük. Thus they are not a good marker of chronology. Were these levels instead to date to the Early Bronze Age, the black burnished ceramics, which were also found in these levels, would make drawing any distinction between the Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age almost impossible. By correlating the levels of Alişar Höyük and the more recently excavated Çadır Höyük, for which radiocarbon dates are available, we can begin to unravel the confusion surrounding Alişar Höyük and in the region in general. Since the material from the Chalcolithic levels 19-15M at Alişar Höyük and the Chalcolithic levels at the more recently excavated Çadır Höyük seem to be well correlated, the excavators of Çadır Höyük suggest that Alişar Höyük’s Chalcolithic levels 14-12M be re-dated to the Transitional/Early Bronze I sequence defi ned by Çadır Höyük, placing them c. 3300/3100 BC-3000 BC.14 This date is based on calibrated radiocarbon dates taken by the Çadır Höyük team and is generally supported by Ulf Schoop’s extensive relative chronology of the regional Anatolian Chalcolithic, but Schoop’s work on the chronology of sites within the bend of the Kızılırmak shows that level 12M material from Alişar Höyük is better dated prior to 3400 BC.15 The simultaneous presence of unburnished and unpainted coarse wares, painted and incised decoration and black burnished wares in these levels, wares also found in the Chalcolithic, would seem to corroborate the assertion that there is a transitional phase between the Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age proper, perhaps elucidating the problems of overlapping ceramic forms and decoration fi rst noted in von der Osten’s work. Alişar Höyük levels 11-10M would then be pushed to the later Early Bronze I or Early Bronze II. The work of Schoop shows that none of the material from Alişar Höyük should be dated earlier than 5000 BC, based on the correlation of the site’s material with others in the region.16 My own analysis of the ceramics at Alişar Höyük has so far been limited to the collection at the Oriental Institute in Chicago, but does potentially confi rm the suggestions of other scholars noted above that indicates an earlier date for many of the levels.