From Sedentism to Protourban Societies in Western Anatolia

Prehistoric archaeological research in western Anatolia has been poorly pursued since the beginning of archaeological excavations in this area more than one hundred years ago. Especially the central coast between the famous ancient cities of Pergamon and Ephesos a terra incognita in most prehistoric periods of humankind. The first systematic investigations conducted during the last decades there could merely highlight the importance of this region for interregional cultural developments, in contrast to the Aegean and south-eastern Europe, eastern Anatolia (upper Mesopotamia) and the Near East, where prehistoric studies look back upon a long tradition. Due to the lack of adequately excavated and, in particular, published prehistoric sites with evaluative data, the decisive role that western Anatolia played in different essential steps of cultural development were ambiguous. Consequently, basic research in prehistory remained crucial for enlarging our knowledge of central scientific questions, such as the transfer of early complex technologies, the dating of the initial stages of the first permanent settlements and their development into proto-urban complex societies. Although prehistoric sites are rare on the western Anatolian coast due to massive sedimentation and shifting processes, two regions served as ideal locations for the realization of the conducted new systematic studies. These investigations lead to the improvement of the knowledge concerning central research questions about the development leading to the first sedentary settlements in the Neolithic period (7 th mill. BC) and the formation of prot-urban structure at the transition between the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age period (late 4th/early 3rd mill. BC). The results have been archived with an interdisciplinary team including researcher and students from different research branches (geophysics, palaeogeography, metallurgy, petrography/mineralogy, geology, zoology, botanics, physics and anthropology) which had built an integral part of this project.