Antropoloji Bölümü

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12514/36

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Items of fun, utility and divination: The knucklebones from Oluz Höyük, north-central Anatolia (Turkey)
(ScienceDirect, 2022) Onar, Vedat; Sıddıq, Abu Bakar; Dönmez, Şevket
Knucklebones (i.e., culturally used astragali) are commonly encountered at many archaeological sites in Anatolia, ranging from the Neolithic to medieval period. Yet, very little is known about the cultural usages of these artifacts through time — as only scant attention has been paid to them. Here, we report a total of 590 even-toed ungulate knucklebones, unearthed from the 2008 to 2017 excavations at Oluz Höyük in north-central Anatolia (Turkey). The specimens were recorded from six cultural occupations, ranging from the Late Bronze Age (Hittite) to the medieval period. The highest number of knucklebones (72%) came from the Iron Age occupations — first associated with a Phrygian mother goddess (Matar Kubileya) temple, and later an early Zoroastrian fire temple complex (Cella) of Achaemenid occupation. Intense cultural marks such as perforating, piercing, polishing, smoothing, coloring, and metal casting were observed – indicating the specimens to be important cultural items with a variety of applications. About 85% of the specimens belonged to sheep and goats, whereas the rest came from cattle (9%), pigs (5%), deer (0.17%) and mouflon (0.85%) — suggesting that the inhabitants of all occupations at Oluz Höyük collected the knucklebones from the animals they commonly consumed. Being by far the first systematic observation of knucklebones from any archaeological site, the results of this study will add vital information to the very limited archaeological knowledge of knucklebones in Anatolia.
Local trend of symbolism at the dawn of the Neolithic: The painted bone plaquettes from PPNA Kortiktepe, Southeast Turkey
(Elsevier, 2021) Sıddıq, Abu Bakar; Şahin, Feridun S.; Özkaya, Vecihi
The PPNA site of Körtiktepe in the Upper Tigris Basin yielded one of the richest Pre-Pottery Neolithic assemblages in Western Asia. The site also stands among a few key Epipalaeolithic–Neolithic transitional centers that played vital roles in the origin and evolution of Neolithic symbolism in Upper Mesopotamia. The site was occupied from the second half of the 11th millennium BCE, and throughout much of the 10th millennium BCE the sedentary hunter-gatherers at Körtiktepe engaged in a socio-symbolic organization with elaborate funerary practice and extensive manufacture of symbolic artifacts, including figurative plaquettes, engraved stone vessels, incised shaft straighteners with elaborate designs, scepters, and large assemblages of beads, mostly unearthed from c2000 intra-site burials. No other PPN site has yielded such an extensive number of burial remains and grave goods. Here, we present a group of painted bone plaquettes displaying morphological features and some imagery so far not seen at any other Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Western Asia. Assessing the specimens in light of the wider symbolic practices among the first Neolithic societies, we argue that Körtiktepe was an important center of symbolic trend at the dawn of the Neolithic in the Upper Tigris Basin.

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Browsing Antropoloji Bölümü by Journal "Archaeological Research in Asia"