Katleen Deckers

Subsistence strategies and vegetation development at Aceramic Neolithic Körtik Tepe, southeastern Anatolia, Turkey

With the advent of sedentism, or living in permanent settlements, a new way of life began. The hunter and gatherers’ well established subsistence strategy of thousands of years slowly moved towards farming, beginning with herding and cultivation and leading to the domestication of animals and plants. The Aceramic Neolithic site of Körtik Tepe in southeastern Anatolia, Turkey, provides insight into a permanent settlement of hunters and gatherers at the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Early Holocene. Archaeobotanical investigations at the site including charcoal studies provide new information about the origins of agriculture in the northern Fertile Crescent. With the start of the Younger Dryas, there was an opening up of the oak woodland, which may have allowed widespread dense stands of annual, especially small-seeded grasses and riverine taxa to grow and thus provide staple foods for the inhabitants of Körtik Tepe. With the beginning of the Early Holocene, the oak woodland spread again and replaced these open grass-dominated stands, and the people of Körtik Tepe seem to have then favoured large-seeded grasses, nuts and legumes. Riverine taxa and a large diversity of edible plants were used for subsistence in both time periods. Increasing numbers of chaff remains and weeds in the Early Holocene samples suggest small-scale cultivation of the wild progenitors of cereals and pulses.

Environmental evidence from the Minaret of Jam Archaeological Project, Afghanistan.

Capitale d’ete de la dynastie Ghuride, le site de Jām en Afghanistan, connu pour son celebre minaret, fut abandonne lorsque les Ghurides furent vaincus par Khorezm-Shah. Lors d’une mission archeologique sur l’impact archeologique d’une construction de route dans la region, la presence de nombreux vestiges organiques concernant la flore et la faune ont ete decouverts. En 2005, une mission a donc ete organisee avec pour but precis d’etudier l’environnement de Jām a l’epoque Ghuride grâce a des etudes geomorphologiques, archeozoologiques et carpologiques. Cet article donne les premiers resultats de ce projet.