Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations

The ALIGNED project developed an aligned methodology for parallel software and data engineering of Web-scale information systems with Linked Data as a unifying technical foundation for system specification and process and tool integration. This methodology (see Chapter 3) is based on a metamodel describing the complete software and data life cycles, domain models, and design intentions. This metamodel specifies tools to produce software development models, including transformations that generate or configure software applications as well as data development models, incorporating data quality and integrity constraints, data curation workflows, and data transformations.

The ALIGNED project developed an aligned methodology for parallel software and data engineering of Web-scale information systems with Linked Data as a unifying technical foundation for system specification and process and tool integration. This methodology (see Chapter 3) is based on a metamodel describing the complete software and data life cycles, domain models, and design intentions. This metamodel specifies tools to produce software development models, including transformations that generate or configure software applications as well as data development models, incorporating data quality and integrity constraints, data curation workflows, and data transformations. Software and data engineering are different disciplines, with different practices and processes. Significant differences between these fields mean that a single prescriptive approach could not work. Instead, the project has identified a matrix of synchronisation points between different stages of the software and data ...

Italy-in fact 23 different countries. All these people came to join Turkish colleagues working at the site. The new excavations use modern scientific techniques to reconstruct the ways that people lived at Çatalhöyük. The aim is to place the art of Çatalhöyük into its full environmental, economic and social context. In the current phase of the project we are attempting to understand the overall social geography of the site, how it was organized ritually, socially and economically. In particular we are trying to work out how the organization of the site developed in the earliest levels. In order to pursue this latter aim we focused in 2012 on excavating buildings in the lower levels in the South Area (Figure 1.2), so that ultimately we can get to the base of the mound in a larger area than was achieved in 1999. We got to the underlying clay marls then, but in the lowest levels we had found only refuse or midden areas. Now we are hoping to find out what the earliest houses looked like, especially since Douglas Baird has found oval houses at the nearby earlier site of Boncuklu. So in the South Area we have been excavating a series of buildings such as Buildings 43, 89, 96 and 97. These have proved very interesting in their own right. In Building 89 a new plastered skull was found. This is only the second example found at the site and emphasizes again that human skulls were kept, passed down generations, and sometimes plastered. The skull was associated with the abandonment and closure of the building which in this case was unusual for other reasons also. The house was in the process of being renovated. A western room had been dismantled and earth collected in a pile in order to rebuild it. But, in the midst of this renovation project, the work was abandoned and the house was closed and filled in so that another house (Building 76) could be constructed on top. We had always thought that houses were rebuilt when they reached the end of their 'use-lives'. But clearly that was not always the case. In the North Area our main achievement was to gain a fuller plan of all the buildings beneath the shelter. Ultimately we hope that the UNESCO heritage site will provide an opportunity for visitors to see how a 9000 year old town was organized. In previous years we had excavated Figure 1.2. Excavation beneath the South shelter at Çatalhöyük. Photo Jason Quinlan. An international team now based in London University (UK) and Stanford University (USA) has undertaken archaeological research at Çatalhöyük since 1993, with a permit granted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and under the auspices of the British Institute at Ankara. We are especially grateful to the General Director of Monuments and Museums. The main sponsors of the project are Yapı Kredi and Boeing. Other sponsors are Shell, Hedef Alliance, Konya Şeker and Konya Çimento.

The chapter presents the results of the research project conducted by the team of archaeologists from Adam Mickiewicz University at the World Heritage site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. The section of this large Neolithic settlement located in the uppermost part of the south eminence of East mound is named the Team Poznań Connection (TPC) Area and was excavated in the years 2012-2017. The unearthed stratigraphic sequence is dated to the period from ca. 6350 to 6000 BC. The project led to the discovery of nine Late Neolithic houses with associated built-in structures and numerous burials. The paper outlines the most important discoveries in house architecture, burial practice, and material culture. The research has contributed significantly to a better understanding of the last centuries of the settlement’s occupation, as well as enhanced our knowledge of the Near Eastern Neolithic. This paper provides an overview of the major transformations of Neolithic lifeways in this period. In addit...

The question of the historicity of the Ionian migration has recently become a hotly debated topic as a result of new archaeological research on the west coast of Asia Minor and new theoretical insights. Unfortunately, the discussion does not seem to move beyond observing patterns in the material record and explaining them by means of rather vague but yet supposedly forceful processes, such as migration and acculturation or cultural hybridization, as if these were complete and sufficient explanations in themselves both for their own existence and for the archaeological phenomena for which they are held to account. There is, however, no attempt to show how these processes worked. This paper aims to make a start with tracing those processes that allowed certain patterns that we observe in the archaeological record to emerge. In doing so, we will focus on two specific patterns that form key elements in the current debate: (1) the increase of painted wheelmade pottery in western Asia Minor during the 12th c. B.C. and (2) the stylistic similarities between PG pottery from the west coast of Asia Minor and the Greek mainland in the 11th and 10th c.

The presence of imported and locally produced Mycenaean pottery in western Anatolia has long caught the attention of scholars and various explanatory models have been proposed to explain the apparent attractiveness of the pottery. In most cases, however, emphasis is placed on the (stylistic) differences between Mycenaean pottery and the various local plain wares, and it is assumed that these differences were actively recognised by local communities and exploited in the formation of social identities. This paper, however, pilots a different approach that focuses not on the stylistic differences between Mycenaean pottery and the various Anatolian wares but on the (perceived) common ground(s) between them and argues that the attractiveness of Mycenaean and previously Minoan pottery lay not so much in its cultural origins or its ‘foreignness’ but rather in its potential to fit in with existing local material assemblages and enhance a sense of communality among cosmopolitan communities.