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FINDS - Pottery

Nurcan Yalman & Serap Özdöl

In the 2003 season, the 4040 Area produced 6488 ‘unstratified’ surface pottery sherds of which 4186 are Neolithic with 29 paint decorated sherds which appear Chalcolithic. 2273 sherds belong to Late Periods (Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine or Islamic). The spatial analysis indicated that Neolithic sherds were increasing to the south of the 4040 Area and possibly relate to Late Neo¬lithic deposits, probably not earlier than Level III. From the South Summit Area, although the collected sherds are definitely Neolithic, there is little to indicate from which Level at this stage of the excavations. In the TP assemblage, although most of the units still contain some late period material, the purity of the Neolithic sherds seems to be increasing.

This year a data base was established for the pottery used a two-tier recording
system. The first was to record the ‘unstratified’ (4040 surface collections) material for total number of prehistoric and late period sherds. The prehistoric sherds were recorded for external surface colour, texture, and a form code for diagnostic sherds. The second system for ‘stratified’ (TP, South Summit) material involved more detail with descriptions for each sherd for abrasion, dimension, production details (paste, surface treatment, firing etc.) and form details for the diagnostics. Although a large amount of work was carried out TP, South Summit and BACH Area sherds were not all entered on to the data base by the end of the season.

Figure 25. Sherd counts from 4040 Area

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