Early Neolithic Innovation: Ventilation Systems and the Built Environment

A wide range of rapid innovations are associated with the shift from mobile communities to sedentism in southwestern Asia. It was during this period that human societies generated many solutions designed to overcome the challenges of local environments, including the first long-lasting built environments, while adapting to life in year-round permanent settlements. The technological innovations that went hand in hand with these socio-economic changes improved the lives of the inhabitants of these communities, defining the period as a time of techno-cultural revolutions. Along with the domestication of plants and animals, houses became domestic spaces. Several characteristics of today's architectural technology originated during this period. The paper discusses one of the architectural innovations of the Neolithic period, "ventilation shafts," at one of the earliest settlements in central Anatolia, Asikli Hoyuk

The impact of the transition from broad-spectrum hunting to sheep herding on human meat consumption: Multi-isotopic analyses of human bone collagen at Asikli Hoyuk, Turkey

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