Beginning of village farming Cayonu

Maney Publishing

Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in Southeastern Turkey: Cayönü Tepesi, 1978 and1979Author(s): Robert J. Braidwood, Halet Çambel and Wulf SchirmerSource: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 249-258Published by: Maney PublishingStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/529567 .

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Introduction

Since the spring of 1964, six campaigns of archeological excavation have been undertaken on the prehistoric mound of (iayonu Tepesi in SE Turkey. The main deposit at (iayonu consists of the remains of a very early village-farming com-

*The following persons have been actively involved in the discussions concerning, and actual writing of, portions of this report, completed in the field, October, 1980: Linda S. Braidwood and Robert J. Braidwood, the Oriental Institute, the University of Chicago; Halet C,ambel and Mehmet Ozdogan, the Prehistory Section, Istanbul University; Michael K. Davis, field assistant, Prehistoric Project; Barbara Lawrence, Museum of Com- parative Zoology, Harvard University; Wulf Schirmer, Bernhard Heid, and Werner Schnuchel, Institut fur Baugeschichte, Karlsruhe University; Rob- ert B. Stewart, Department of Biology, Sam Houston State University.

munity. The site is located near the headwaters of the Tigris river, on the Tauros mountain piedmont, at 38°1 6'N; 39°43'E, and at an elevation of slightly over 830 m. (FIG. 1).

The results of our first four campaigns have already been briefly reported. 1 The intention here is to outline the work

1. Robert J. Braidwood, Halet C,ambel, Barbara Lawrence, Charles L. Redman and Robert B. Stewart, "Beginnings of Village-Farming Com- munities in Southeastern Turkey 1972,"ProcNatAcadSciUSA 71 (1974) 568-572; Halet C, ambel, ' 'The Southeast Anatolian Prehistoric Project and its Significance for Culture History," Belleten 38 (1974) 361-377; Halet C,ambel and Robert J. Braidwood, "The Joint Istanbul-Chicago Univers- ities' Prehistoric Research Project in Southeastern Anatolia. Comprehen- sive View: the Work to Date, 1963-72," in Halet C,ambel and Robert J.

Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in Southeastern Turkey: (iayonu Tepesi, 1978 and 1979

Robert J. Braidwood The Oriental Institute The University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois

Halet (iambel Prehistory Section Istanbul University Istanbul, Turkey

Wulf Schirmer Institut fur Baugeschichte Karlsruhe University Karlsruhe, West Germany

et al.*

The most recent preliminary report on excavations at the early village-farming community site of (gayonu in SE Turkey covered the field season of 1972. What was learned in the next two field seasons, 1978 and 1979, summarized here, supports a somewhat unhappy proposition. The more that exposures on a site are enlarged and deepened, the more that earlier suggestions and interpretations must be revised. This is unfortunate because the earlier suggestions have already passed on into secondary literature where they have become uneradicable fos- sils. Nonetheless, the game is worth playing iffullness of understanding is the hoped for goal. The two seasons' work summarized here were those when our German architectural colleagues joined in the effort, markedly increasing the expedition's potentialfor understanding the archaeological record of this early village community.



250 Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in SE TurkeylBraidwood, ,Cambel, Schirmer, et al.

Figure 1. Sketch map of the portion of Turkey beyond the NE corner of the Mediterranean, with the location of (iayonu near the Tigris headwaters.

of our 1978 and 1979 field seasons and to suggest how the results of these two seasons affect and revise our general understandings. For these recent campaigns, Istanbul Uni- versity's Prehistory Section and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute were joined by Karlsruhe University's In- stitut fur Baugeschichte. The expedition not only received financial help from the Universities and from friends of the Oriental Institute, but also benefited very substantially through grant BNS75-13632 of the National Science Foun- dation and through funding by the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums of the Turkish Ministry of Culture.

The main prehistoric phase of settlement at gayonu (Phase I) appears to have been by people who were upon the very threshold of effective food-production. Plant domestication was present from the settlement's beginnings but animal domesticates only appeared later in the phase. A cluster of eight radiocarbon age determinations, based on adequate samples from trustworthy findspots, puts the major portion of this prehistoric phase within the half millennium 7250-6750 B.C. (in Libby uncalibrated terms). Further samples from the 1978-79 seasons are yet to be assayed. Surface indication is that the village spread over about 30,000 sq. m. and by the end of the 1979 season our exposures totaled almost 7% of this area although considerably less in the deeper layers of the mound (FIG. 2).

The soil matrix of (iayonu, a fair portion of it undoubtedly of disintegrated sun-dried brick material, is of a very hard dull, red-orange clay resembling gumbo. Fortunately for us, the original inhabitants used much stone in founding and sometimes in flooring their buildings. Although upstanding walls, above the rather high stone foundations, were evidently mainly of the now disintegrated mud brick, the plans of various of (iayonu's buildings are normally quite well expressed by the stone foundations.

The Artifactual lnventory

Perhaps in part because the site's hard clay matrix is so difficult to excavate, the relative quantity and variety in the small objects inventory is not as large as would be normal from early village sites of comparable age, for example from those along the Zagros flanks. This matrix hardness cannot, however, be the only reason for the relatively modest yield of smaller objects. For whatever reason, there is little to add (for the 1978 and 1979 seasons) to the descrip- tion of the small object inventory already given in the preliminary reports on our earlier seasons.2

In essence, the Phase I (iayonu inventory is without port- able pottery vessels. It includes clay figurines of animals and a few of bumanoid forms. The bulk of the object inventory consists of chipped stone tools of flint and obsidian3, and of large and small ground-stone artifacts. Implements of horn and bone are fairly common, including hafts for flint knives and for celts. Considering its age, the appearance of simple artifacts of hammered native copper is remarkable.

Braidwood, eds., The Joint lstanbul-Chicago Universities' Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia, l (Istanbul IJniversitesi Edebiyat Fakultesi Yayinlari No. 2589, 1980) 33-64.

2. See the works cited in note l, and Halet gambel, ';Chronologie et organisation de l'espace a CJ ayonu," in Olivier Aurenche, ed., Prehistoire du Levant: Chronologie et organisation de l'Espace depuis les origines jusqu'au Vleme Millenaire (actes de la colloque C.N.R. S . no. 598, Maison de l'Orient Mediterraneen, Lyon, in press).

3. Linda S. Braidwood, "The gayonu Chipped Stone Industry and its Possible Interrelationships," Vlll Turk Tarih Kongressi, Ankara, October 1976, l, vol. I (1979) 37-45. This paper makes use of the statistics developed in the report on the 1968 and 1970 yield of flint and obsidian artifacts by Charles L. Redman. Redman's study, together with a report on the heavy ground-stone yield by Michael K. Davis, will appear presently in the British Archaeological Report series.



Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 8, 1981 251

Figure 2. Air view of the central and (in the background) western exposures on Cayonu looking west. The dark area on the left is the BogazcJay, a small tributary of the Tigris. To the right in the central area are refilled exposures made in our earlier seasons; cf. FIG. 4. (Air photograph courtesy of the Turkish Army.)

So far, we do not see evidence for significant technolog- ical changes in different categories of the small object inventory throughout the duration of the phase. It is, perhaps, in certain fine-grained small stone artifacts, such as '4brace- let" fragments, and in clay figurines, that the (:ayonu inventory shows the closest analogies to the early village materials of the Zagros flanks. On the whole, however, the site's small object inventory, given present knowledge, seems to have an overall complexion of its own While it does have very generalized similarity to the materials of comparable age, both for the Zagros and the Levant regions, and in what we now know of the mid-Euphrates region, in detail the assemblage suggests derivation from an earlier and as yet not specifically identified artifactual tradition.

Whatever its antecedents, we have no hesitation in as- serting that (:ayonu's main prehistoric phase may be inter- preted as yielding the remains of a substantial village, in

which lived some number of generations of early food- producing people.

The Building Activities

This very brief sketch of (iayonu's main prehistoric yield (which also ignores the rather ephemeral hints of two succeeding phases) might thus end were it not for the site's building remains. These are truly remarkable and our excavations of the 1978 and 1979 seasons have brought new information in the matter. In these campaigns, we were able to clarify our earlier understandings both of the building types and the stratigraphic sequence of the main prehistoric phase of Cayonu, although substantial problems in interpretation still remain.

Within Phase I, the main prehistoric phase of (:ayonu, there are in terms of construction at least four sub-



252 Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in SE Turkey/Braidwood, fambel, Schirmer, et al.

Figure 3. Air view of the central area, looking east. The exposures on the right and within the baulks (with the exception of the flagstone-floored building remains) were made in 1978. The grill plan in the left foreground was cleared in earlier seasons but a new grill plan can be seen appearing within the baulks. In the upper left are the traces of exposures made in earlier seasons, cf. FIG. 4. (Air photograph courtesy of the Turkish Army.)

phases of building activity (FIGS. 3, 4, 5). As to general stratigraphyoalso, these sub-phases are separated one from the other. Of these sub-phases, the upper three each yield the remains, respectively, of a distinct building type. The uppermost sub-phase is characterized by rectangular single- or double-roomed house plans (FIG. 4). The next contains the remains of buildings having several small cell-like di- visions (FIGS. 4, s).Below this cell-plan sub-phase comes another, distinguished by the foundations of long rectangular buildings, of which one part has a grlll-like construction (FIGS. 3, 4). In the earliest now available sub-phase not widely exposed so far we have encountered only a few and incomplete traces of buildings (FIGS. 3, 4) which do not yet show uniform characteristics.

The remains of two very special buildings, each with similar uniform rectangular plans, demand particular attention. These buildings appear in more than one of the sub- phases and are treated in detail below.

Each of the types of building remains thus briefly described represents a building type having several common characteristics. Each type was a freestanding rectangular structure, the basic plan of which implies a thorough con- ceptualization and execution in one single building process

with none of our examples showing later major changes in plan. Rather, there are examples that were, after some duration, replaced on the same spot by a completely new building of the same plan-type and dimensions.

Beside the above mentioned plan-types, there are, throughout, a few remains of buildings or parts of buildings that do not follow the foregoing basic conventions and are, therefore, difficult to interpret. For example, in the earliest sub-phase, the burned remains of a wall of poles, branches, and clay was encountered (FIG. 6), as well as the stone remains of a single-roomed structure with an interior stone bench around its walls (cf. FIG. 4, square N28, sw).

The rectangular buildings of the uppermost sub-phase are all to be found on the very top of the mound, immediately under its present surface (FIG. 4). Accordingly, their preservation is only fragmentary. It appears at present as though they consisted of only one or two rooms, but buildings having more rooms cannot be excluded. Two examples stand par- allel to each other, in a N-S orientation; nearby, another example is oriented toward the sw. The foundations indicate room dimensions of about 2.2 m. to 3.5 m. width and in the single, completely preserved example a length of about 7.5 m. The stone foundation construction for its en-




Figure 4. Sketch plot plan of building remains in the major portion of the central area, looking east; cf. FIG. 3. The major grid is 10 m. The remains of the uppermost sub-phase buildings are stippled: it will be noted that while the single large- roomed example has an orientation of its own, the other examples directly overbed earlier cell-plan remains. The cell plans are indicated by simple hatching, the grill plans by cross hatching. The outlines of the terrazzo floored building (square L29) and of the flagstone floored building (squares 028-29) are unshaded, as are the outlines of the various parts of structures of the earliest now-known sub-phase (square N28).

closing walls measures about 60 cm. in width and consists of rough limestone cobbles and some riverworn pebbles. The superstructure, probably of mud-brick, is not preserved.

The characteristic feature of buildings of the next sub- phase lies in their arrangement into small cell-like rooms (FIGS. 4, 5). These cells usually have widths of ca. 0.6-1.2 m. and with one exception lengths of ca. 1.4-2.5 m. Five to 12 such cells may be found in one or another of such buildings, with the cell sizes varying with respect to the number of cells in the given building (i.e., the more cells, the smaller each individual cell). An eight-cell divi- sion is the most common. The outer dimensions of these buildings are ca. 4-6.2 m. in width, and 6.5-9 m. in length; that is, they are all of approximately the same proportion. The width of the outer walls is 40-60 cm., the inner walls only 40-50 cm. The building material consisted of mud- brick above a sub-structure of small rough cobbles. In some of the buildings the sub-structure is preserved up to 60 cm. The individual cells were frequently connected by small openings. There are a few rare door-socket stones; these point to wooden doors.

In the areas that have been exposed so far, the cell-plan buildings have appeared only on the higher parts of the mound; that is, they have not been encountered on the slope towards the river. Their orientation, almost without exception, was toward the ssw. Furthermore, the spatial arrangements of the buildings show a certain regularity.

The following observation is of particular importance: the buildings of the cell-plan sub-phase are by no means all contemporary. Rather, the cell-plan settlement probably ex- isted over a relatively long span of time during which new buildings of the same plan-type were being constructed. It is striking that these new buildings were frequently built exactly above the remains of older ones, having the same orientation and dimensions. Only the uppermost examples in this sub-phase show evident deviations from this.

The building foundations of the next earlier sub-phase are clearly long rectangles (FIGS. 3, 4). Their width is about 5.00 m. Only two examples have so far been completely exposed; their lengths are 11.5 m. and 13.5 m. The proportion of length to width is therefore greater than 2:1. All of the buildings of this type are oriented toward the SSE. The foundations show different construction arrangements for the northern and southern halves of these buildings. In the northern half, a closely set, grill-like series of low foundations runs between the east and west outer foundation walls. Each grill strip is 30-50 cm. wide and the space between them only ca. 15-40 cm. The southern half of such a grill building consisted of a floor of closely packed small cobbles, with several adjoining rooms at the very southern- most end.

Certain details in the grill-plan type deserve special attention. The intermediate spaces between the grill strips have openings alternatively to the east or west to the



254 Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in SE TurkeylBraidwood, JCambel, Schirmer, et al.

Figure 5. Building remains of the cell-plan sub-phase in the western exposures, looking ssw. In this area, cell plans appeared immediately below the surface. (Air photograph courtesy of the Turkish Army.)

outside. It is also apparent that, supported by the grill construction itself, there was in one case a plastered floor evidently laid over a base of wooden supports and small branches. It seems, therefore, that the northern grill-like portion of these buildings was provided with aerated floors.

Little can be said about the superstructure of these grill buildings. We lack any clear traces either of mud-brick upper walls or of strong stone upper walls. Only in one instance (the house with the plastered floor described in the previous paragraph) are there subdivisions indicating an arrangement resembling that of the cell-plan type. These are narrow rows of stones, certainly not broad enough to have been the base for higher massive walls.

As was the case with the cell plans, the buildings of the grill-plan sub-phase were not added to, rebuilt, or repaired.

Here also, new buildings were frequently placed immediately above the foundations of a preceding example, following the same dimensions and orientation.

We return now to the two special buldings that demand particular attention. In the present state of our knowledge, the two examples, which show common characteristics, come from different sub-phases. The later of the two examples, the so-called terrazzo building (FIG. 4) was more or less contemporary with the cell-plan buildings. The older example, the so-called flagstone building (FIGS. 3, 4),

seems according to our most recent observations to be older than the grill-plan buildings. Both examples are rectangular. They have, in common, the longer axis of the rectangle at right angles to the main SSE orientation. The interior arrangements, in both examples, included regularly




uppermost sub-phase of the main prehistoric occupation, only simple rectangular houses, without special characteristics, are now apparent. Only one complete foundation plan has so far been encountered. The others are so fragmentary that no special characteristics can be discerned either in terms of the settlement arrangement or in terms of the individual buildings.

The next or cell-plan sub-phase shows the remains of a uniform, well thought-out building, the orientation of which seems to have been determined by the sun and the direction of the prevalent wind. If further examination should verify current observations concerning the locations of individual buildings, there may have been from 15 to 25 contemporary units in the settlement.

Most of the small cells of these buildings, given their restricted dimensions, cannot themselves have served as living or sleeping quarters. Such quarters must be sought elsewhere, either in other buildings not yet encountered in our exposures, or in an upper story above the cells, or above part of them. Several detailed observations favor this latter possibility. The cells themselves would then have served as storage bins or magazines. According to our evidence from this cell-plan sub-phase settlement (so far as present observations go), a building that clearly stands out as ex- ceptional is the terrazzo building. It can claim for itself the full meaning of the term architecture, in which building construction and building design form a whole. Whatever its function may have been, we may, therefore, see in it a building of higher order in the community of this cell-plan sub-phase.

The next earlier sub-phase buildings, clearly separated from those of the succeeding cell-plan structures, again show a uniform building type with its own orientation. In terms of its now known distribution over the site, it can be said that, almost everywhere that exposures have been made to sufficient depths, the remains of grill-plan buildings have been encountered. According to the distances observed between these remains, the whole settlement should have had space enough to allow for 40 to 50 such buildings. We must naturally, however, consider that parts of the settlement of this sub-phase may have been free of buildings or given over to buildings of a different plan type (e.g., of the terrazzo or flagstone type).

The above-ground, aerated floors in the northern portions of the grill-plan buildings indicate the absolute need for dry floors and a corresponding comprehension by the builders of how to achieve them. What we may have is simply dry storage space in this portion of these buildings: the thin- walled, aforementioned small cell-like subdivisions, found preserved above the plastered floor in one grill plan example, argue in favor of this possibility. Whether the inhabitants' necessary living or sleeping quarters would then have been in some portion of this space, or in the adjoining

Figure 6. A portion of the fragmentary remains of a curved wall of poles, stones, and mud from a context (cf. FIG. 4, square N28, NE) that is earlier than the grill plans.

spaced buttresses on the walls and carefully made massive floors. The outside wall foundations of both of these buildings are more massive than those of the buildings described above for the specific sub-phases.

The interior space of the terrazzo building has dimensions of ca. 7.5 m. x 9.8 m. A true terrazzo floor gives the building its name. This floor is of a reddish-orange color on the surface; it is provided with two pairs of white lines, positioned with relation to the buttresses on the walls. A mineralogical analysis of the terrazzo floor material, kindly undertaken by Professor Dr. Immermann and Dr. Einfalt of the Institut fur Petrographie und Geochemie, of Karlsruhe University, has shown unequivocally that a variety of limestone materials was used in a bonding of burned and slaked lime.

In detail, the terrazzo floor has the following composition: a layer of small greyish-white limestone pieces in a bonding material of light-colored lime mortar was applied over a well-packed bed of coarse limestone fragments. A second layer, of reddish-orange limestone particles (the color com- ing from haematite naturally occurring around the calcite crystals of the limestone), was applied within a lime mortar of the same colored material. The fine-grained white limestone pieces that made up the pairs of lines were then added in this reddish-orange upper layer. Five different materials were therefore used in the preparation of this floor. After it had set and hardened, the whole surface was then carefully polished.

The so-called flagstone building, which was partially destroyed by erosion on its river front, has a floor of large flat stones measuring up to 1.5 m. in length. From this floor, the remains of two standing stones emerge opposite the buttressses of the back wall.

The following considerations may be taken into account in the interpretation of building activities on (iayonu. In the



256 Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in SE TurkeylBraidwood, (:ambel, Schirmer, et al.

southern half of the plan, or even elsewhere on the site cannot yet be determined.

Each of the building types, described above in some detail, was of a well thought-through and planned construction. One is indeed tempted to suppose that the builders of the older grill-plan structures had a more developed comprehension of building techniques, and of building vis-a-vis climatic relationships than did their successors. The post- grill context of the terrazzo building shows, on the other hand, that its builders had a very thorough knowledge of the complicated processes involved in achieving the terrazzo floor itself. Furthermore, the fact that the colored material- evidently especially desirable but not immediately available and therefore even more valuable is confirled to the uppermost thin layer of the terrazzo floor, shows a most eco- nomical use of building materials.

The evolved comprehension of the art of building, which the (iayonu evidence yields, is truly remarkable. We ask ourselves, where are its forerunners?

Plant and Animal Remains

The exposures made during the 1978 and 1979 seasons clarified some of our preliminary understandings of the (iayonu villagers' utilization of plant and animal resources. Unfortunately, as had also been the case in earlier seasons, the presence of plant and animal evidence was relatively modest in the near-surface depths of each new operation. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that the exact na- ture of a transition from the cell-plan sub-phase to that of the uppermost sub-phase still remains unclear, presents a problem: we cannot yet be fully specific as to whether animal domesticates appeared during the later aspects of the cell-plan sub-phase or were restricted only to the last sub- phase. Our earlier conclusions, however, do still remain: during the main prehistoric phase at (iayonu, domesticated plants appeared appreciably earlier than did animal domesticates.

The Botanical Evidence

The 1978-79 botanical studies were singularly unpro- ductive, reminiscent of the 1968 efforts. The sampling was apparently made either too close to the surface for good preservation, or in areas where little food processing was done. Only two plants were found, a single fruit each of pistachio and hackberry. Both of these species have been reported from our earlier excavations and add little to our understanding. As we review and reconsider the evidence of agricultural activities at (iayonu presented in 1976 4,

however, we believe that there are two outstanding features.

4. Robert B. Stewart, "Paleoethnobotanical report Cayonu 1972," Economic Botany 30 (1976) 219-225.

First is the absence of barley as a cultivated crop. This absence is important because there is a tendency to lump all prehistoric sites and to consider the evolution of agriculture as monophyletic, that is to say that at a given village a plant was taken into cultivation and thereafter all cultivars of a particular crop derived from that event. Actually, a species may well have been domesticated several times in different places. Another version of this idea suggests that the entire known agricultural inventory would have been adopted (where environment permitted) as the concept of cultivation was accepted. Our findings at CJ ayonu show that this was not the case. The inhabitants of CJayonu clearly rejected barley while cultivating both emmer and einkorn, although at other Near Eastern sites both were being cultivated at the time. Unfortunately our results do not tell us why barley was rejected.

There is another anomaly at our site that deserves more thought and study. One might expect that, since it is gen- erally agreed that people were first hunters and gatherers, the lowest sub-phase of occupation would show a greater animal dependence than the upper sub-phases and, con- versely, less early dependence on cultivated plants and increasing plant dependency later. Our evidence suggests just the opposite. Our earlier interpretation of this relationship 5

concerned itself primarily with fat sources and the likely distance to a reliable source of vegetable fat (pistachio was the primary oil seed recovered). While this may well be the case, we are now thinking that these data may suggest a much more significant concept: did the decline of animal resources (game?) accelerate, if not initiate the expansion of crop production? The unreliability of 14C dating for fixirlg short time intervals, and the paucity of prehistoric sites where relative dependencies have been studied, com- plicate a more general application of this concept. Never- theless, further considerations of animal versus plant dependencies as "the goad" in the shift from hunting-gath- ering to village farming seems warranted. Even if it cannot account for the shift itself, the concept might be useful in explaining the spread of agriculture.

The Faunal Evidence

As regards a dependence on domestic animals by the people of the main CJayonu prehistoric phase, our original basic concept remains unchanged. Save for the dog, which appeared early, domestic animals, mainly sheep, appeared only in the final aspects of the phase. The point has already been made above that we still lack precision in understanding exactly what went on, both as to building activity and stratigraphy, towards the very end of the cell-plan sub-phase and during the final sub-phase. The bones of domesticated

5. Ibid.




sheep come from these later contexts. As we see the situation now, the appearance of domestic animals seems to have happened swiftly and with no strong connection with what preceded it.

From the deeper and fully standardized cell-plan contexts and before, animal bones are relatively abundant and it is clear that dependence was on wild game, especially large artiodactyls. In the areas where the building types now exposed are well defined, the relative abundance of ovines to a higher proportion of large artiodactyls is found to be the same for both the cell-plan and the grill-plan sub-phases.

From these well-defined cell-plan and earlier contexts, the bones of the artiodactyls Bos and Cervus seem to be fairly evenly distributed. What is more, a very preliminary survey (not a detailed bone count) of the different elements of Bos and Cervus skeletons suggests that whole carcasses were being utilized.

Considering the bones of wild sheep and goats from these contexts, the situation appears to have been different and needs further study. There are variations in relative bone counts of these animals and also of the particular elements of their skeletons from different contexts. The meanings of these differences are not yet clear.

Other aspects of the faunal evidence also require further study. Sus, which throughout the occupation was very important, needs to be fitted into the picture. So do represen- tatives of such open country animals as Equus and Gazella.

Returning to the specific point of the appearance of animal domestication, it is only in the final aspects of the main (iayonu phase that sheep, primarily, are attested as domesticates. For earlier contexts, the bones of Capra, and to a slightly lesser extent, those of Ovis, have dimensions that average greater than those of the mean for wild goats and wild sheep. Furthermore, the remains of the sheep from the earlier contexts seem preponderantly to have come from fully adult animals. The artiodactyls were clearly wild game.

Thus, unless far broader exposures of the earlier horizons should change this general picture, animal domestication may be taken as clearly later at (iayonu than was plant domestication.

Conclusion

In many ways, the most important results of the 1978-79 seasons' excavations were the clarification of our earlier understandings, which had been based on more limited exposures and evidence. Indeed, the preliminary report on the most recent field season before 19786 proposed a sequence of as many as six sub-phases, although this report did admit that these six were not encountered in fully sequential stra-

tigraphic order. This lack of a whole stratigraphic sequence, without unconformity, in one single excavation unit, is still with us as unfinished business. We now feel certain, however, that the scheme proposed herewith for a total of only four now available sub-phases corresponds to present evidence. It was, for example, in 1978 that we were able to establish that the special (terrazzo and flagstone) building plan appeared in more than one of the sub-phases of essen- tially domestic plan-types, and thus should not be counted as a sub-phase in its own right.

Whether or not evidence for more than the four sub-phases available at present will yet appear, only further excavation will tell. At an absolute elevation between remains of cell- plan and grill-plan buildings in a fair-sized portion of the central exposure on the site, there is a broad area composed of several horizontal beds of burned mud-brick debris, relatively free of stones and artifacts. Its exact extent and possible meaning are still unclear. It probably signifies some special kind of feature and not an overall sub-phase.

Thus, our present understandings still leave much to be desired. The mostly fragmentary building remains of the uppermost sub-phase and their possible relationship with the later aspects of cell-plan sub-phase building activity are still unclear to us. We are still worse off with the limited evidence so far available from the lowermost sub-phase.

It is with reference to the limited evidence we now have from this lowermost sub-phase that a difference in emphasis in reporting may be noted. The architectural colleagues herewith, restricting their general observations quite objectively, speak (see above in the second section) of "....a few remains of buildings....the burned remains of a wall of poles, branches and clay. . . ." for building fragments that the prehistorian colleagues would allow themselves to see as a curved segment of wattle and daub wall. Such differences of emphasis in reporting are entirly appropriate and especially so in a preliminary report such as this. Had the excavations at C, ayonu been restricted to one season's work in one S m. x S m. pit alone, with only prehistorians as excavators, all would have seemed quite simple and clear!

We return, in closing, to certain provocative considerations posed especially by the (;ayonu building remains, certainly more sensitive indicators of change than is the small object inventory. Considering that we must be dealing with the remains of a cultural group apparently upon the very threshold of effective food-production, what does it mean that:

a) there is such a remarkable degree of standardization and distinctiveness already achieved by the builders of the grill and cell-plan types, but no ready explanation of the meaning of the change from the earlier of these plan types to the later? b) Even more significantly, what meaning has the early appearance and persistence, over at least two sub-phases, 6. Braidwood, Cambel et al., op. cit. (in note 1) 568.



258 Beginnings of Village-Farming Communities in SE TurkeylBraidwood, (;ambel, Schirmer, et al.

of the very evidently non-domestic and quite special terrazzo-flagstone type, which undoubtedly implies some community-wide activity (whether sacred or secular), but of a purpose not yet clear to us?

And, again, who, where, and what were the forerunners of the (iayonu cultural achievement?

Robert J. Braidwood, Oriental lnstitute and Department of Anthropology Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago, and co-director (with Halet (:ambel) of the joint excavations at (:ayonu, has excavated in lraq, lran, and Syria as well as in Turkey. He is a joint author (with Linda Braidwood) of Excavations in the Plain of Antioch, I and of the forthcoming Jarmo, etc., final reports.

fIalet (;ambel, professor and head of the Prehistory Section, lstanbul University, and co-director of the joint work at (;ayonu, was born in Berlin of a Turkish diplomatic family and educated at Robert College, the Sorbonne, and lstanbul. Her field work began in the early 1940s at Arslan Tepe and Kara Tepe. She is the editor of The Joint Istanbul-Chicago Universities' Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia I (1980).

Wulf Schirmer, professor and director of the lnstitut fur Baugeschichte at Karlsruhe University and associate director of the excavations at /;;ayonu, has had long experience in the exposure and interpretation of architectural evidence from various German excavations in the Near East. He is a co-author of the reports Bogazkoy IV (1969) and Yazilikaya (1975), and is a member of the central committee of the Robert Koldewey Society of architectural history.



Beginning of village farming Cayonu

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