Çatalhöyük 1993 Archive Report

ÇATALHÖYÜK 1993 ARCHIVE REPORT

Çatal Hüyük Regional Survey: Reconnaissance Season

Trevor Watkins and Douglas Baird

Part of the new programme of work at Çatal Hüyük is a regional survey of settlement and other archaeological material to be carried out under the direction of Dr Trevor Watkins of the Department of Archaeology of the University of Edinburgh. This survey programme is intended to produce a high quality set of data on the sites in the area for the Turkish Ministry of Culture, but it is also designed to be a part of the Çatal Hüyük research programme. As part of that larger research programme the regional survey is being established to work in close liaison with the programme of geomorphological and environmental research under the direction of Dr Neil Roberts of the Department of Geography at Loughborough University. The regional survey research is intended to produce an historical and environmental perspective to the central focus of the excavations at Çatal Hüyük.

Dr Trevor Watkins, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Archaeology at Edinburgh University, and Dr Douglas Baird, Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the same Department, arrived in Ankara on September 9th. They spent the first week working in the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, checking the published results of earlier surveys on the Konya plain by James Mellaart and Dr David French with other sources of information in the Institute, including the sherd collections, maps and the published soil surveys and soil maps produced by the Agricultural University of Wageningen in Holland. In order to acquaint themselves with the wider context of the Konya plain, they then set out to make a two-day tour of the perimeter of the area to be surveyed, starting at Konya and reaching as far as Beyseffir, Karaman, Kara Dag and Yarma.

On 17 September field survey work began with the assistance of Naci Bakirci of Konya Museum and continued until 22 September, 1993. The survey team used the excavation head-quarters at Çumra as the base, and a hired car for transport. The objectives of the reconnaissance season were to undertake a short, first season of survey to the standard required by the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums, to assess the research potential of the area for more detailed surface survey and to test field recording and analysis methods for future work.

Using the combined resources of the previously published surveys, maps and the newly available 1:25,000 maps the survey was concentrated this season on the map in the centre of which stands Çatal Hüyük - Map M29-cl. Three sites identified by Dr French (1970) were no longer identifiable. Three sites not previously identified by either Mellaart or French were located, visited and confirmed, and a fourth site (at the NE corner of the map) was positively identified but not visited. In addition two findspots of displaced architectural elements of Late Roman date were recorded. Altogether the map sheet of approximately 120 square kilometres now has 16 settlement sites (höyüks) and the 2 find-spots located on it. Two mounds remain to be recorded next season and sixteen reports of sites have been filed with the Directorate-General. The available information and the surrounding 1:25,000 maps suggest that between ten and fourteen sites can be expected in each 120 square kilometer map in the region of the Çarsamba Çay fan and its environs. Future seasons of survey will aim to record these at the rate of one or two map sheets per season.

For the purposes of the research survey programme the results of the reconnaissance were very encouraging.

The 1:25,000 maps are extremely helpful in locating already surveyed sites and in suggesting where more sites may be found.
The mounds are very varied in size, shape and form. The surface indications show that there are settlements of very small size as well as many of considerable size (and one or two of very large size). Some settlements appear to be single period, while others are very long-lived and show evidence of occupation in many different periods. The indications therefore are that a very interesting study of the history of prehistoric and historic settlement of the area is possible.
Quantities of surface archaeological material and the conditions of preservation are very good. In particular, tests carried out this year have shown that in some cases at least the surface material on each höyük has scarcely been displaced and still portrays the location and size of particular occupations. Pottery has been identified ranging in date from the Neolithic to the Byzantine and Selçuk periods. The potential therefore exists to document the variation in the size of a settlement period by period, and we have tested quantitative surface sampling methods which will work effectively in these conditions.
Because old canals are frequently dredged and many new canals are being cut, there is plenty of upcast soil and exposed sections in canal sides in which it is possible to search for old land surfaces and even low mounds which have been buried by alluviation. This potential has not been tested fully in this short season, but on one site where there was an adjacent canal it was possible to follow the extent of the settlement below the present level of the plain for a further 150 meters beyond the visible edge of the höyük. In another case it was possible to see that a mounded settlement did not extend below the surface of the modern plain as far as the line of a nearby canal.

Despite our very limited experience, we would add a note of urgency. We have been very impressed with the speed at which the agricultural landscape in the Çumra area and the Konya plain in general is changing. Given that the area is archaeologically of great importance, we feel that the need for detailed survey is very urgent. Some small, low sites which were found and reported in the 1960s or 1970s can no longer be found. Intensive irrigation and cultivation is spreading very rapidly. And the new canals and water channels are made of concrete, which means that the opportunity to observe what lies below the modern surface through the medium of the old canals and channels and their frequent clearings will soon be gone.

At the end of our time we made a brief excursion to the area to the East of the Çarsamba Çay alluvial fan on which Catal Hüyük is situated. We wanted to visit a site which had been drawn to Dr Watkins' attention by Dr David French. The site of Pinarbasi is situated at the NW tip of a line of limestone hills NW of the volcanic massif of Kara Dag in the middle of the Konya plain. It was reported as being possibly an epi-palaeolithic site more than 10,000 years old. Since the regional survey is intended to reach to the limits of the plain and beyond into the contrasting hill country, we had intended to consider including a trail hill area in the 1994 season of survey - hence our brief reconnaissance this year.

The purpose of remarking at length on this excursion is to draw attention to its importance and a threat to its integrity. The site of Pinarbasi proves to be an important, unique and extensive occupation site dating almost certainly to the last millennia of the Palaeolithic period. It is very well preserved, except that there have been very recent casual excavations, which include the excavation of at least one very substantial tomb of a much later date. The other, smaller excavations are presumably the results of trial searches for more tombs. These excavations are doing considerable damage to the earlier occupation site beneath. It was in the soil from the casual digging and one of the exposed sections of a pit that the evidence was recovered for the existence of a virtually undamaged, extensive and very special early prehistoric deposit.

We venture our opinion as prehistoric archaeologists that it is very urgent that the site of Pinarbasi be assessed by some careful, small-scale trial excavation in order that a decision can be made on protection of the site or fuller, salvage excavation. It only remains to add that we from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, who have some experience in excavating sites of this period in other parts of the Middle East and in salvage archaeology, would be very willing indeed to offer our services.

We are very grateful to the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums for the assistance given and for the opportunity to assist in recording a part of Turkey's cultural heritage as well as beginning our own research, and we very much look forward to returning in 1994 to begin our first major season of survey with a full team.