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Abstract At Asikli Hoyuk, one of the earliest Pre-pottery Neolithic mound sites in Central Anatolia, a shift in animal utilization from broad-spectrum exploitation of diverse animal species to a concentration on managed caprines has been observed. Changes in the balance of meat to plant foods over the same time frame remain an open question. In this study, carbon and nitrogen isotopic analyses of bulk collagen and compound-specific nitrogen isotopic analysis of amino acids were undertaken for the human remains to elucidate the dietary impact of the hunting to herding transition over a span of about 1000 years. The results showed that animal protein consumption did not change very much as managed sheep became the main source of meat. The contribution of animal protein to the total human diet at Asikli Hoyuk is similar to comparison data on later Neolithic farmers in Anatolia measured in previous studies. The early development of ungulate management and the increasing focus on just a few prey species do not appear to have forced drastic changes in the extent human carnivory from the early Pre-pottery Neolithic to the early Pottery Neolithic. However, human individuals showed similar isotopic compositions within the same buildings at Asikli, suggesting variation in food consumption by household.

Speleothems are recognized as sensitive recorders of climatic fluctuations in the past and provide precisely dated and highly resolved environmental records. However, their potential as an archaeological archive is not fully acknowledged yet. Here we present several stalagmites containing soot and charcoal layers from various caves in Turkey and provide evidence that these black carbon layers are directly related to human activity. The archaeological artefacts found in Tabak and Kocain caves in SW Turkey support the linkage between soot and charcoal layers existence and human activity in the caves. For this study, we focus on stalagmites from Tabak and Kocain cave. To explore the age and nature of the soot and charcoal layers within stalagmites Ta-9, Ta-10 and Ko-1, Uranium series dating, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and thin section analyses were performed. The episodic soot and charcoal deposition in stalagmites Ta-9 and Ta-10 occurred between 7424 ± 225 yr BP and 6670 ± 218 yr BP while the soot and charcoal layers in stalagmite Ko-1 formed between 2830 ± 189 yr BP and 470 ± 56 yr BP. In combination with the archaeological inventory in Tabak Cave, the soot and charcoal layers within stalagmites Ta-9 and Ta-10 show that the cave was used repeatedly as a burial site during Chalcolithic period. In Kocain Cave was also used repeatedly between the Iron Age and Medieval Period, most likely for ritual activities and for providing animals with water from a small spring in the entrance to the cave. The soot and charcoal layers within stalagmites from Turkey prove that speleothems are also important as archaeological archives. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Abstract The provenance of marbles used for ancient statuary and architecture is of utmost importance for archaeologists, art historians and archaeometrists. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive characterisation of the white marble exploited in antiquity in Goktepe (Mugla Province, Turkey) to increase the reliability for identifying this marble in ancient artefacts. A campaign of interdisciplinary archaeological and geological fieldwork undertaken by the Marmora Asiatica project is based on a multi-method approach and on a representative set of samples used for the archaeometric analyses. Petrographic investigation showed that the Goktepe marble is more variable with regard to fabrics and grain size than previously suggested, whereas it is generally non-luminescent and dolomite-free. Stable C and O isotope and elemental analyses confirmed the results reported so far. We also report, for the first time for Goktepe white marble, the results of Sr isotope measurements, which in combination with elemental ratios, e.g. Sr/Mg and Mn/Sr, and δ18O values, greatly improve the discrimination among Goktepe, Carrara and other fine-grained white marbles. Applicability of these proxies was tested on artefacts from Hadrian's Villa, for which Carrara and Goktepe provenance had been proposed. The paper also reports new archaeological findings and results of estimates of stone extracted from the quarries, which allowed for a recontextualization of the significance of quarries at Goktepe. High-resolution topographic measurements, performed for the first time with the use of a 3-D laser scanner, combined with geological field study, allowed for precise calculation of the volume of the white variety extracted in antiquity. Estimates of 17000 m3 is almost a half less than previously suggested. Moreover, a careful study of the existing literature showed that in some instances assignment of white marble artefacts to the Goktepe quarries may not be accurate. Verification of provenance for those problematic artefacts and a more reliable identification of Goktepe marbles in the future can be achieved by application of the set of analyses proposed in this work, which has a higher discrimination potential.

The residents of Boncuklu Hoyuk, a mixed forager-farming community dating to the pre-ceramic Neolithic c. mid-9th to mid-8th millennium cal. BC, used their hands to manipulate local clays into artefacts, often leaving behind traces of their palm prints and fingerprints on the surface of the objects. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a digital imaging technique that uses multiple images and mathematical models to reveal the 3 dimensional shape of an artefact's surface, provides a detailed, post-processing interactive view of the prints on each artefact. Geometric clay objects are the single-most abundant artefact category at Boncuklu Hoyuk with over 1000 clay objects recovered and studied at this central Anatolian village to date. The aim of the project is to understand the manufacture, use, and disposal of geometric clay objects at Boncuklu Hoyuk through an analysis of the hand and fingerprints present on their surfaces. RTI reveals palm and fingerprints on more than half of the study sample consisting of eighty-eighty clay artefacts. Analysis of the prints using friction ridge density protocols indicates that adult females were the primary makers of the artefacts. The results were unchanged when taking into account artefact shape and type, and when considering temporal and locational data. The association of these artefacts during manufacture principally to women suggests an early link in the life of the object to women, potentially suggesting a gender based division of tasks at Boncuklu Hoyuk. This work was supported by Pacific Legacy Inc., and carried out with the kind permission of Prof. Douglas Baird and Dr. Andrew Fairbairn, directors of the Boncuklu Hoyuk Project along with Dr Gokhan Mustafaoolu, Assistant Site Director. WOS: 000450381000011 Pacific Legacy Inc.

International audience; Horses, asses and zebras, can produce first-generation F1-hybrids, despite their striking karyotypic and phenotypic differences. Such F1-hybrids are mostly infertile, but often present characters of considerable interest to breeders. They were extremely valued in antiquity, and commonly represented in art and on coinage. However, hybrids appear relatively rarely in archaeological faunal assemblages, mostly because identification based on morphometric data alone is extremely difficult. Here, we developed a methodological framework that exploits high-throughput sequencing data retrieved from archaeological material to identify F1-equine hybrids. Our computational methodology is distributed in the open-source Zonkey pipeline, now part of PALEOMIX (https://github.com/MikkelSchubert/paleomix), together with full documentation and examples. Using both synthetic and real sequence datasets, from living and ancient F1-hybrids, we find that Zonkey shows high sensitivity and specificity, even with limited sequencing efforts. Zonkey is thus well suited to the identification of equine F1-hybrids in the archaeological record, even in cases where DNA preservation is limited. Zonkey can also help determine the sex of ancient animals, and allows species identification, which advantageously complements morphological data in cases where material is fragmentary and/or multiple candidate equine species coexisted in sympatry.

The northern extremity of Mesopotamia, also known as the Hilly Flanks of the Fertile Crescent, witnessed a series of major sociopolitical and economic transformations during the Bronze Age, which led to the emergence of specialized pastoralism in the third millennium BC. This research focuses on the application of Macrophysical Climate Modeling (MCM) to eastern and southeastern Anatolia and correlates the results with the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000–2000 BC) settlement patterns of the region. Changes in settlement systems throughout the Early Bronze Age are assessed from the perspective of heterarchic social organization and how various forms of pastoralism might have been used as adaptation to aridity. The significance of this research is that using the MCM the paleoclimatic backdrop is established for such adaptations, which may be used to study the long-term dynamics of human–environment relations.

The microstructure and chemical composition of blue cakes, found during the archaeological excavation of the Ayanis fortress (Eastern Anatolia, Turkey), have been investigated by means of scanning electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), micro-Raman (mu-Raman) and optical microscopy (OM) techniques. The analysis of the Ayanis cakes has shown the presence of Egyptian blue (i.e. CuCaOSi4O10, cuprorivaite), as the major component, intermixed with minor amount of other phases such as partially reacted quartz grains, an adherent glass phase and copper oxides. Since the finding of Egyptian Blue in Turkey has been never reported so far, great attention has been paid to its characterisation. The micro-chemical and micro-structural investigations of the Ayanis cakes have allowed a further insight into the manufacturing process and into the sources of the starting materials. The results of the characterisation have revealed some significant differences with respect to Egyptian blue cakes found in Egypt and Mesopotamia, as for instance the absence of tin excluded the use of bronze scraps or filings in their preparation differently from those produced in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Furthermore, some peculiarities of Egyptian blue found in Ayanis, as the detection of zinc in the cakes, allow to put forward the hypothesis of a local production considering that a large part of the bronze artefacts found at the Ayanis fortress is characterised by the presence of zinc as minor alloying element. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. WOS: 000328015000015

Multi-method provenance studies, including petrographic, isotopic, electron paramagnetic resonance and trace chemical analyses, have been carried out on 20 white, 9 black and 1 red artifacts purposely selected to investigate the use and distribution of sculptural marbles at the Hadrian's Villa. A large fraction of the marbles tested (21 samples, 70%) are shown to be from Asia Minor, mostly originating from the recently discovered site of Goktepe near Aphrodisias (15 or 71%). All the 9 black samples investigated and 6 out of 11 white Asiatic marbles are from Goktepe, the remaining being Docimium marble from Iscehisar (4 samples) and Aphrodisias marble from the city quarries (1 sample). The single red sculpture tested proved to be Carian red marble from the Iasos quarries, whereas non-Asiatic marbles include 3 Carrara and 6 Pentelicon samples. The selection of marbles tested is preliminary and incomplete, but, despite this, the results are noteworthy, especially since the marble of other sculptures from the Villa has already been identified as Goktepe. Together with other published results, the marble distribution at the Hadrian's Villa seems to suggest that the use of sculptural marbles in the Roman world underwent considerable changes around the turn of the 1st and the 2nd century AD. The evidence supporting this hypothesis is briefly summarized in the conclusions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.