A New Neolithic Settlement in the Upper Tigris Basin in the Light of its Knapped Stone Assemblages: Boncuklu Tarla

Neolithic Age sites in the Upper Tigris Basin have significantly increased in number over the past few years, not least because of rescue excavations related to the Ilısu Dam Project undertaken over the last decade. The resultant data has produced significant new information about this hitherto little documented period in the region. Boncuklu Tarla was discovered in 2008 during a field survey, with excavations beginning in 2012. This paper details the knapped stone assemblage from a single season of excavation, material that shed important light on the Pre- Pottery Neolithic B of the Upper Tigris Basin, adding to the information we previously knew from the important site of Çayönü

La distribution de la culture acheuléenne et ses itinéraires possibles en Turquie

La Turquie est un pays qui se situe au carrefour des routes de migrations de trois continents et joue un rôle essentiel dans la distribution de la culture acheuléenne vers l’Eurasie. Cette culture arrive en Anatolie en suivant le corridor Levantin, car plusieurs sites paléolithiques ont été signalés, au nord, autour de la ville moderne d’Hatay. La culture acheuléenne est dispersée à travers l’Anatolie, notamment à l’est et au sud-est. Aucun témoignage n’a été signalé en Thrace du côté turc, et dans la péninsule Balkanique vers le Sud-Est de l’Europe. Cependant, les vestiges de la culture acheuléenne sont très denses dans les régions Est et Sud-Est de l’Anatolie. Les vestiges culturels acheuléens, en particulier les bifaces trouvés sur les sites en plein air en contexte d’anciennes terrasses fluviatiles, sont nombreux le long de l’Euphrate et dans le bassin du Tigre. Ils constituent une preuve évidente de la distribution de la culture acheuléenne en Anatolie et de l’éventuelle route migratoire des Homo erectus, depuis l’Anatolie vers le Caucase. La localisation de nombreux sites acheuléens récemment identifiés dans le Caucase semble l’affirmation de cette distribution. Dans cet article, sur la base de la répartition géographique des industries, la dispersion de la culture acheuléenne et ses probables axes de diffusion en Turquie seront étudiés.Turkey is a country located at the crossroads of possible migration routes between three continents and, as such, it plays a pivotal role in the distribution of Acheulean culture in Eurasia. Although Acheulean culture, which is considered to have reached Turkey via the “Levantine corridor”, shows a wide distribution in the Turkish Anatolian side, it is not found in the Thrace part of Turkey. Therefore, the spread of Acheulean culture from Turkey towards the Balkan Peninsula, i.e., in southeastern Europe, via the Thrace region of Turkey is not considered. However, the cultural artifacts of Acheulean culture are often found in eastern and southeastern Anatolia. The Acheulean cultural artifacts, especially bifaces, found in the open-air sites settled on the old river terraces – generally in the Euphrates and Tigris Basin – are strong indications of the distribution of Acheulean culture in Anatolia as well as the possible migration route of Homo erectus from Anatolia to the Caucasus. Many Acheulean sites recently identified in the Caucasus seem to support such a distribution as well. This paper discusses the distribution of Acheulean culture and possible routes spreading into Turkey according to the geographic regions.</p

ESR Dating of the Last Interglacial Mousterian at Karaïn Cave, Southern Turkey.

International audienceWe have obtained ESR ages on 18 teeth from archaeological levels AH16-AH27 exposed at the east profile in compartment E at Karaı̈n Cave. This sequence exhibits a transition in lithic assemblage from a Classic Charentian to a Karaı̈n (Zagros-type) Mousterian between levels AH27 and AH25, and two calcite-cemented soils at levels AH22 and AH16 which have been interpreted as climatic warm phases. Since we found no systematic increase in tooth ages with depth, we assigned this sequence a mean early uptake (EU) age of 108 ± 23 ka and mean linear uptake (LU) age of 121 ± 27 ka, on the basis of 37 subsamples from 16 teeth. In this site, the precision of individual tooth ages suffered little from the problems associated with uranium uptake. However, this advantage was offset due to uncertainties arising from the rather inhomogeneous nature of the enclosing strata which contained various sizes of limestone blocks with intervening sediment. This led to difficulties in ascribing a precise annual gamma radiation dose to individual teeth in such a "lumpy" gamma radiation field. Considerable scattering of the individual tooth ages occurred mainly because the annual gamma dose comprised greater than 50% of the total annual dose to the individual teeth. On the basis of the ESR dating results, we infer that deposition of the two different lithic assemblages and both the penultimate and the final climatic warm phases at Karaı̈n probably occurred during oxygen isotope stage 5. We also conclude that these lithic assemblages are significantly different than contemporaneous Levantine Mousterian industries which occur about 700 km to the southeast